Mumbai: Obama's First Foreign Policy Test

Nov. 28, 2008— -- In Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama issued a statement Friday, offering condolences to families of American victims in Mumbai. Obama called the terrorist attacks "outrageous."

"These terrorists who targeted innocent civilians will not defeat India's great democracy, nor shake the will of a global coalition to defeat them," the statement said. "The United States must stand with India and all nations and people who are committed to destroying terrorist networks, and defeating their hate-filled ideology."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice briefed the president-elect twice on the situation in Mumbai, where at least five Americans have been killed so far.

Obama thanked the current administration for informing him on a global crisis that he may inherit.

"There is one president at a time," Obama said. "I will continue to closely monitor the situation on the ground in Mumbai, and am grateful for the cooperation of the Bush administration in keeping me and my staff updated."

American officials believe the terrorists may be Pakistani extremists bent on turning the disputed Kashmir region along the border with India into a separate Islamic state.

During the campaign, Obama threatened to crack down on terrorists hiding in Pakistan's western mountains.

"Nobody's talking about attacking Pakistan," Obama said during a Sept. 26 debate at the University of Mississippi. "Here's what I said ... that if the United States has al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out."

But Obama was talking about al-Qaeda, not the extremists suspected in the Mumbai attacks.

"Despite a lot of talk during the campaign about Afghanistan, really Pakistan is the central issue here," said Dan Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And we can see that, because it sits very squarely between these problems in India and the problems that we are already seeing in Afghanistan."