India 'has evidence' linking Pakistan with raid

Police in India claimed yesterday to have established a link between Pakistan's intelligence service and last week's attack on parliament in New Delhi by Kashmiri militants, increasing the risk of conflict between the two countries.

The New Delhi police commissioner, Ajai Raj Sharma, told reporters: "The things which have come to notice clearly show that ISI [Interservices Intelligence agency, Pakistan's secret service] was connected with this and if ISI is connected with it, then Pakistan must know of it."

He said that one of four men currently held in connection with the attack admitted he had been trained at an ISI camp in Muzzafarabad in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

In a separate incident yesterday, Indian officials said four Kashmiri separatists were killed during a raid on an Indian paramilitary camp south of Srinigar.

Even before the latest outbreak of violence, India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had issued an ultimatum calling on Pakistan's leader, Pervez Musharraf, to crack down on Kashmiri militants by freezing assets and arresting their leaders in the wake of the foray.

Mr Vajpayee is under pressure from his own Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party to abandon restraint and launch military action.

He said at the weekend that he had reached the limit of tolerance.

Pakistan has denied involvement in the New Delhi attack.

Mr Musharraf promised to act against any group involved if evidence emerged but warned he would retaliate if India was to take "precipitous action".

Last night, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, told NBC television: "I think the Indian government clearly has a legitimate right of self-defence. But I think we have to be very careful in this instance because if in the exercise of that right of self-defence we have states going after each other, we could create a... situation that could spiral out of control."