Bush told India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in a telephone call that "out of this tragedy can come an opportunity to hold these extremists accountable and demonstrate the world's shared commitment to combat terrorism," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement.
In addition to the Americans killed in the coordinated shooting rampage in India's financial capital, the foreigners among the dead included Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Singapore.
Bush told the prime minister that "he has directed the state and defense departments along with other federal agencies to devote the necessary resources and personnel to this situation," Johndroe said.
Despite India's claim, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said: "I don't think that this is the time for India or anybody in India to accuse Pakistan. It's time to work with Pakistan. Pakistan is now a democracy. India is a democracy. And as two democracies, we need to strengthen each other, rather than fall into the trap of the terrorists, who want us to fight with each other so that they can get greater strength."
India repeatedly has accused Pakistan of complicity in terrorist attacks on its soil, many of which it traces to militant groups fighting Indian rule in the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir. The U.S. has tried to persuade Pakistan to shift its security focus from India, with which it has fought three wars, to Islamic militants along the Afghan border.
Obama told Time magazine in an interview in October that "Kashmir in particular is an interesting situation ... that is obviously a potential tar pit diplomatically." He spoke of devoting "serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there to figure out a plausible approach." When asked if that sounded like a job for Clinton, Obama replied, "Might not be bad" and that they had spoken about the issue when they had lunch in September in Clinton's New York office.
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