NEW DELHI, July 18: The 2008 terror attack on Mumbai came as then foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was visiting India.
Last week’s terror blasts in the city happened when Pakistan’s newly-named foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar is preparing to resume the stalled bilateral talks here later this month.
These are some of the points that could be discussed in India by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who arrived in New Delhi on a three-day trip on Monday night.
Officially, Ms. Clinton will hold “strategic dialogue” talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his foreign minister in New Delhi before heading south to Chennai on a business-related trip.
Her arrival in India late on Monday comes after the blasts in Mumbai last week that killed 19 people and injured more than 130.
No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts, but relations between India and Pakistan have been rocked in the past by terror strikes in India that the government blames on Pakistan-based groups.
Indian reports said Pakistan's instability and the threat of the Taliban's re-emergence in Afghanistan were likely to feature in Ms. Clinton's discussions with Dr. Manmohan Singh on Tuesday.
India is wary of the planned US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, fearing that extremists within Pakistan could take advantage of a power vacuum in the war-torn country.
Significantly, fresh leads into last week’s attack in Mumbai are reported to be focusing on the alleged role of the Taliban and the self-styled Indian Mujahideen. The latter are now widely claimed by Indian media to be a protégé of the Afghan group.
New Delhi broke off its peace process with Islamabad after the deadly November 2008 attacks on Mumbai, which were blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-i-Taiba group.
Ms. Clinton is expected to put much of the focus on her three-day trip on economic ties.
A 2008 deal allowed India to buy nuclear reactors and fuel. It was meant to lead to major contracts for US firms, but legal obstacles and uncertainty have undermined such hopes.
The United States was unhappy when its bidders were dropped from the $12-billion competition in April to provide India with126 combat aircraft, one of the largest military contracts of recent years.
“The depth of the US-India Strategic Dialogue demonstrates the United States’ strong support for India as an important actor on the world stage,” a statement from Clinton's office said before the visit.