WASHINGTON, July 17: The US has so far not seen any evidence to suggest that Pakistan or Pakistan-based groups were involved in last week’s Mumbai blasts, a State Department official said on Monday.

  “The evidence to who is responsible, we have not seen yet … we will wait for the results of the investigation,” said Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher while briefing South and Central Asian journalists on United States policy ambitions in the two regions.

  Describing the blasts as a ‘horrible tragedy,’ Mr Boucher said they were executed by “somebody with evil intent, with local knowledge … lot of planning … and a lot of malice.”

  The Bush administration’s point man for South and Central Asia also disagreed with the suggestion that America’s relations with Pakistan were on the decline. The US, he said, was assisting Pakistan in the areas that were important for its development as a modern and moderate state, such as economy, education, energy, as well as being involved in a strategic partnership with the South Asian nation.

  Asked if the US believed Pakistan was not doing enough to curb terrorism along the Afghan border, Mr Boucher said: “Terrorism is a tough (problem) and we are all in that fight together.”

  The US, he said, was helping Pakistan fight terrorism so that “we can beat this big threat to Pakistan’s success”.

Mr Boucher said the Indo-US nuclear agreement will be formalised in September after the August recess of the US Congress. “The bill will be up for discussion in the House of Representatives next week, and in the Senate soon afterward. I am hesitant to comment on the timeline, but my estimate is that the final draft of the agreement will be formalised in September,” Mr Boucher said.

In his opening statement, the United States official outlined what he said was America’s ‘ambitious agenda’ for South and Central Asia in which promoting regional trade plays a pivotal role.

He also spoke of the possibility of linking the two regions with the Middle East, adding that South and Central Asian regions offered ‘many opportunities’ for trade and development.

  The US official noted that some former Soviet states were still linked to Russia and said that the US would “want to see new ties develop” in that region. But he dispelled the impression that the US was competing for influence in Central Asia with Russia and China.

  The US, he said, wanted major world powers to work with each other in creating more opportunities for the people of the region and ‘not to compete with each other’. “We do not want these states to be subservient to a major power … subservient to a single market … but to have more and better opportunities. We expect China to be involved in this region.”

  The United States, he said, was also involved in a project to bring electricity from Central Asia to Karachi and in the development of a trade route that passed through Afghanistan and Pakistan, linking India and China with Central Asia.

  All these efforts were aimed at ‘making trade flow,’ said Mr Boucher, adding that the United States would also like to see greater commercial cooperation among South Asian nations and supported the South Asian free trade agreement.