WASHINGTON, Dec 26: The United States has formally placed Lashkar-i-Tayyaba and Jaish-i-Mohammad on the state department’s list of officially designated terrorist organizations.

The move was widely expected after the US last week blocked the financial assets of the two groups following the Dec 13 attack on the Indian parliament.

The organizations were also publicly named by President George Bush as being responsible for terrorist activities against India, seeking to harm Indo-Pakistan relations, and working to undermine the authority of President Gen Pervez Musharraf.

India has been blaming Jaish and the Lashkar for the parliament attack. Another organization with links to Kashmir, Harkatul Mujahideen, is already on the US list of designated terrorist organizations.

In a statement on Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was designating the two as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations under US law. These groups, which claim to be supporting the people of Kashmir, have conducted numerous terrorist attacks in India and Pakistan. As the recent horrific attacks against the Indian parliament and the Srinagar state legislative assembly so clearly show, the Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, Jaish-i-Mohammed, and their ilk seek to assault democracy, undermine peace and stability in South Asia, and destroy relations between India and Pakistan.”

By designating these groups as foreign terrorist organizations, Mr Powell said, “we implement the provisions of the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. This act makes it illegal for persons in the United States or subject to US jurisdiction to provide material support to these terrorist groups; it requires US financial institutions to block assets held by them; and it enables us to deny visas to representatives of these groups. I made this decision in consultation with the attorney-general and the secretary of the treasury after an exhaustive review of these groups’ violent activities. The United States looks forward to working with the governments of both India and Pakistan to shut these groups down”.

Pakistan is already reported to have frozen bank accounts of the two groups, and also to have detained Jaish leader Maulana Masood Azhar, who was in an Indian jail when he was exchanged for hostages of an Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Kandahar in December, 1999, allegedly by Kashmiri militants. Since his release, Maulana Azhar has been living in Pakistan.

The state department’s latest move amidst a tense standoff between Pakistan and India over New Delhi’s demands for action against Pakistan-based militant organizations is interpreted here as a step designed to mollify India and restrain it from precipitating any military adventure.