Back to Square One? Singh might end the 'normalization' process unless Musharraf cracks down on jihadist groups, but that may be the wrong message.

Byline: Ron Morea, Sudip Mazumdar and Zahid Hussain

It's a good thing Manmohan Singh is not easily excitable. In the aftermath of the bloody Mumbai train blasts that killed nearly 200 people last month, the Indian prime minister has faced growing cries for political vengeance. Indian investigators and government officials have not directly charged Islamabad with complicity in the attack, but on television talk shows, in newspaper columns and on Internet blogs, outraged Indians are demanding that their country smash suspected terrorist enclaves inside Pakistani-held Kashmir just as Israel is doing to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The opposition, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is publicly calling for Singh to endorse a policy of "hot pursuit" against Pakistan-based militants. Privately Indian officials dismiss such talk as dangerous and unthinkable. But the calls for retribution have grown so loud that last week Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf responded. "No one can take any punitive action against Pakistan," he warned. "The country's defense is in strong hands."

So much for the Indo-Pakistan peace process. The superheated rhetoric may be so much hot air for now, but it shows how far relations have deteriorated since January 2004, when the leaders of the two nuclear-armed rivals began a dialogue aimed at normalizing relations and eventually solving the nearly 60-year-old dispute over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir. Even the cautious and mild-mannered Singh indirectly pointed a finger at Pakistan the day after the attacks by saying the terrorists could not have staged the Mumbai explosions without support from "elements across the border." To show he meant business, he postponed a meeting of the two countries' foreign secretaries that had been scheduled late last month, and he allowed the police to reissue a nearly five-year-old demand that Pakistan arrest and turn over 20 alleged Pakistani extremists who are suspected of involvement in terrorism in India. Pakistan is expected to ignore this latest request as it has the previous one.

But Singh is under the gun to go even further. Influential political commentators and security analysts are urging him not to resume the normalization process unless Pakistan takes some action against jihadist elements inside Pakistan. Musharraf's constant assurance that he's doing all he can to crack down on anti-Indian jihadist outfits is simply not enough, the hard-liners assert. "Musharraf must show results before any meaningful peace talks can be restarted," says C. Raja Mohan, strategic-affairs editor of the Indian Express newspaper. Without Pakistan taking some concrete action, adds Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management in New Delhi, "all this talk of peace is simply feeding the crocodile." Seemingly bowing to the pressure, New Delhi has informed Islamabad through diplomatic channels that if Musharraf doesn't take "effective action" to dismantle jihadist camps in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and end their links with terrorists inside India then the dialogue is in danger, according to India's Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahmed.

Indian's hardening stance has put Musharraf in a bind at home, perhaps limiting his ability to deliver what India is demanding. He has ...