India says not reached end of road on 26/11

New Delhi: India has not exhausted its diplomatic options in its attempt to bring the Mumbai attack plotters to justice and would take further steps only if Pakistan does not act, India's foreign minister said on Saturday.

"We have not reached the end of the road," Pranab Mukherjee told CNN-IBN , following a week in which India has shown increasing frustration at what it sees is Pakistan's unwillingness to bring the Mumbai attack plotters to justice.

Ten heavily armed gunmen killed 179 people in the attack on India's financial capital at the end of November. Only one attacker was captured alive.

India blamed Pakistani militants from the outset, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said this week for the first time that the assault must have had the support of "official agencies" in Pakistan.

Pakistan rejected the charge and said it has sent India a response to a dossier of evidence from the Mumbai attacks presented by India.

The Mumbai attacks also revived tension between two nations that have fought three wars since 1947, leading to speculation in the media that India could carry out strikes against militant camps inside Pakistan.

Mukherjee declined to comment on what India's options were, but replying to a question on whether India was considering Israel-like strikes, he said the two issues could not be compared. "I have not occupied in Pakistan's land, which Israel has done, so how is the situation comparable?" he said.

Experts said India will keep up diplomatic pressure on Pakistan and the international community to take action. "India is also likely to go to the United Nations and ultimately try and get the international community to declare Pakistan as terrorist state," C. Uday Bhaskar, a strategic affairs expert told Reuters.

"The essential thing is to keep maintaining the pressure," Shashi Tharoor, the former UN Under Secretary-General wrote in the Times of India.

"Pakistan must not be allowed to believe that with the passage of time, Mumbai will have been forgotten and Islamabad will be off the hook."

Meanwhile, former Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf is also echoing what Pranab Mukherjee is saying. He stated that India's threat to conduct surgical strikes in Pakistan will not be a possibility.

"We have a deterrence force and we have resolve to use that force if we are under threat. In my opinion no surgical strikes or attacks are possible in Pakistan," Musharraf said.