NEW DELHI, Feb 5: In a flurry of statements ahead of Mr Richard Holbrooke’s visit to South Asia next week, Indian officials have kept the heat on Pakistan as an epicentre of global terrorism, signalled New Delhi’s continued interest in joining international alliances to curb the menace, and have deftly succeeded in keeping the Kashmir issue out of the purview of the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The officials, who though they contradicted each other on matters of detail about Islamabad’s much awaited probe report on the Mumbai carnage, for intance, were united in suggesting that Pakistan’s direct or indirect official links existed with the terrorists who attacked Mumbai in November.

“We in India are next to the epicentre of international terrorism in Pakistan,” India’s Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon told an audience of political and defence analysts in Paris on Wednesday.

“We have directly suffered the consequences of linkages and relationships among terrorist organisations, their support structures, official sponsors and funding mechanisms, which transcend national borders but operate within them.”

Even more specifically, he saw a link between the bombing of Indian embassy in Kabul in July last year and the Mumbai attacks of Nov 26.

“In each case the perpetrators planned, trained and launched their attacks from Pakistan, and the organisers were and remain clients and creations of the ISI.”

Mr Menon is one of at least half dozen senior Indian officials, including the ministers of home, defence and foreign affairs, as well as India’s national security adviser, who have taken turns on TV to dilate on the Mumbai incident and its wider implications for the global war on terror.

Some of the senior foreign interlocutors, have had to disagree with portions of the Indian case, others have counselled a more generous approach towards Islamabad’s efforts in tackling the terror menace.

However, it was evident from Mr Menon’s latest remarks that India planned to continue keep the heat on Pakistan. Moreover, there was a message that India, while it did not see a reason for international help on Kashmir, was keen to join the arriving international strategies in Afghanistan.

Mr Menon offered some prescriptions for the way ahead, which included advice to stop military aid to Pakistan, saying it was like giving whiskey to an alcoholic.

“For India, a stable Pakistan at peace with itself is a desirable goal,” he said. India needed a peaceful periphery in its own interest, and would work with all those in Pakistan and the international community who further that goal.

“Given the fragile and unfinished nature of the polity beside us, there is much that the international community can do to help. For instance, arms sales to Pakistan totally unrelated to the fight against terrorism or extremism are like whiskey to an alcoholic, a drug reinforcing an addiction, skewing the internal political balance, and making the consolidation of democracy more difficult,” the Indian official said.

He spelt out India’s interest in both the countries on Mr Holbrooke’s itinerary, a point likely to be stressed when the American envoy includes New Delhi on his tour next week.

“The effects of the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan have been felt in Afghanistan for a long time.

For Afghanistan to regain peace, the roots of international terrorism in parts of Pakistan and its local sponsors will have to be eliminated,” Mr Menon argued.

“The Afghan people, like the Pakistani people, have made it clear on every available occasion, in elections or in other ways, that they would rather have nothing to do with terrorists and their political and other sponsors.

India is working with Afghanistan to reconstruct the economy, carrying out projects for over $1.2 billion.

The foreign secretary was worried that large areas to the west of India, in Pakistan extending into Afghanistan had seen the collapse of state structures and the absence of governance or the writ of the state, with the emergence of multiple centres of power.

“The results, in the form of terrorism, clandestine nuclear proliferation, extremism and radicalism are felt not just by India but by the world.”

He said a month had passed since India handed over a dossier of the Mumbai terror attacks to Pakistan with ‘evidence’ linking the attacks to elements in Pakistan. But India still awaits a response from the Pakistani authorities, and prevarication continues.”

The Mumbai attacks were not the only reason for the poor state of relations with Pakistan.

“Sadly, the escalating violence since early 2007 in the form of ceasefire violations, cross-border infiltration and terrorist attacks from Pakistan came after a sustained effort by India and Pakistan to improve relations through the composite dialogue and back channel diplomacy which achieved unprecedented success. That dialogue has now fallen victim to internal developments in Pakistan.”