India Tightens Security at Major Airports

Rice is pushing Zardari to go after anyone who the Indian government identifies as having planned the attack. "The fact is that non-state actors sometimes operate within the confines of a state, on the territory of the state, and when that is the case, then there has to be very direct and tough action against them," Rice said in New Delhi last night, standing next to India's foreign minister.

An Indian paramilitary official stands guard at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in New...

An Indian paramilitary official stands guard at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in New Delhi today. Security has been beefed up at major airports in the country following the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai which left over 188 people killed.

(Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images)

Rice and Mullen, U.S. officials say, have two main bargaining chips to convince Pakistan to act: the hundreds of millions of dollars of financial aid given to the Pakistani military every year, and Pakistan's current economic crisis. Pakistan's government needs IMF and World Bank money to pay its employees; the U.S. has major influence over both.

On the Indian side of the border, Rice and Mullen are here to calm government nerves, heightened by a huge groundswell of popular anger directed at Indian politicians who, people here believe, failed to prevent the attack despite numerous intelligence warnings.

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The ruling Congress party faces national elections early next year and could be forced by popular anger to take a much more aggressive stance against Pakistan, Indian analysts say, than it normally would.

"They are trying these diplomatic moves to get Pakistan to cooperate: not merely in the investigation of this thing but closing these camps and coming down hard on these terrorists," says Brijesh Mishra, a former National Security Advisor and a current informal advisor to Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. "But the country is angry. And this government wants to survive. It has elections coming in four, five months time. How can it ignore public anger?"

The U.S. is leaning on India not to respond too aggressively in part because of a threat made by a senior Pakistani intelligence official: that the military would be willing to reduce its focus on fighting the war on terror.

Pakistani soldiers have been fighting the Taliban and its allies for months along the Afghanistan border -- a fight U.S. officials in Afghanistan say has saved American lives. But any move by India might prompt Pakistan to shift its soldiers from the western border to its eastern border.