What's Brewing Between India, Pakistan?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 17, 2008 — -- Three weeks after one of the most notorious terrorist attacks on Indian soil, Indian and Pakistani diplomats are expressing doubt about each others' intentions and have almost completely cut off ties with each other.

Both countries have asked the other for significant concessions and neither has received anything it's asked for, diplomats say. And while both sides have mostly shown patience, India, the United States and the international community are showing no signs of relieving the tremendous pressure they have put on Pakistan since last month's attack in Mumbai.

"I think it's fairly obvious that the attack was based on Pakistani soil," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said twice today while standing next to an unhappy-looking Pakistani foreign minister. "That places special responsibility on Pakistan to act."

It is a message that the Pakistani government rejects, but one that it has received from a steady stream of American visitors as well: from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Michael Mullen immediately after the Mumbai attacks, as well as Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Tuesday.

Kerry arrived here, according to U.S. diplomats, with a conditional promise: to push a bill first co-sponsored by Vice President-elect Joe Biden that would flood Pakistan's troubled tribal areas with billions of dollars in economic aid, but only on the condition that Pakistan act as the United States wants it to in the war on terror.

That, most recently, has meant cracking down on terrorist groups that India and the United States blame for launching the Mumbai attacks.

Pakistani officials have all stressed in the last week that Pakistan is cracking down on Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which the U.N. Security Council labeled a terrorist organization last week.

"Pakistan is a responsible country and Pakistan is complying with its international obligations," Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said today.

Some Jamaat-ud-Dawa offices have been shut and Hafiz Saeed, the group's leader, is under house arrest.