India's home minister Shivraj Patil resigned Sunday as anger grew over intelligence failures leading up to the attacks on Mumbai and investigators focused on a Pakistan-based militant group. Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram will be India's new home minister and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will take over the finance portfolio for now, the government said Sunday. As anger boiled in the aftermath of the attacks, reports suggested the Indian government was considering suspending a peace process with Pakistan. “There is a view in the government that India should suspend the peace process and composite dialogue to show that it is not going to take lightly the deadly carnage in Mumbai,” the Press Trust of India quoted unnamed officials as saying. It said the government, “including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is very upset as it feels that Pakistan has not kept its promise made at the highest level to end terrorism directed at India.” NDTV, a New Delhi-based television channel, also said quoting officials India may halt talks with its neighbor and suspend the five-year ceasefire on the Line of Control that separates the two sides in Kashmir. It may also boost troops on the Kashmir border and suspend rail and air links with Pakistan, NDTV said. Meanwhile, Pakistan government began rallying support both at home and abroad. Pakistan condemned the assault as a “barbaric act of terrorism” and denied any involvement by state agencies. But it said it would move troops from its western border with Afghanistan, where security forces are battling Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters, to the Indian border if tension escalated. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani telephoned opposition politicians late Saturday to brief them on the crisis. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi spoke by telephone to the foreign ministers of China and the United Arab Emirates as well as European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and told them Pakistan had promised all help to India. US President George W. Bush said on Saturday he had been closely monitoring the Mumbai attacks. Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari told Indian television Saturday he would cooperate in the investigation and act decisively if any Pakistani link was found. “If any evidence comes of any individual or group in any part of my country, I shall take the swiftest of action in the light of evidence and in front of the world,” he told CNN-IBN. But Indian and US officials suggested the gunmen could have been members of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Indian media reported that the only surviving militant had identified all the Mumbai attackers as Pakistanis who had been trained by Lashkar. Ajmal Amir Kamal, 21, who was caught on a CCTV camera wearing a T-shirt with a “Versace” logo, was being interrogated in a safe house in Mumbai, reports said. US counter-terrorism officials said that evidence was emerging that Lashkar could have been behind the attacks, while Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said “elements in Pakistan” were responsible.
