The US Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates says the Al-Qaida is supporting Lashkar-e-Toiba in a bid to provoke a war between India and Pakistan - an effort, he believes, is aimed at destabilising Pakistan and gaining access to its nuclear arsenal.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Gates said, “Al-Qaida is providing them with targeting information and helping them in their plotting in India - clearly with the idea of provoking a conflict between India and Pakistan that would destabilise Pakistan.” India believes LeT was behind the attacks in Mumbai last November.

In her testimony to the committee, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton echoed Gates’ concern. “The extremists we are fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan have attacked us and our allies before,” she noted in a clear reference to attacks on India, adding, “If we allow them access to the very same safe havens they used before 2001, they will have a greater capacity to regroup and attack again. They could drag an entire region into chaos. Our civilian and military leaders in Afghanistan have reported that the situation is serious and worsening. We agree.”

US officials believe the Taliban’s incursion into Swat Valley triggered a realisation among a majority of Pakistanis that their fate, too, is threatened by terrorists. A US official, who spoke to The Tribune on the condition of anonymity, said Pakistan “is probably still wedded to the idea of terrorism to keep Afghanistan insecure and unstable.” Noting Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's blunt assertion this week that Osama bin Laden has not taken refuge on Pakistani soil, the official said, “just saying we don't have Osama bin Laden doesn't absolve you.” Taliban militants are streaming over the border into Pakistan all the time, he pointed out.

Gates described the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan as the epicentre of global terrorism, telling the senators: “And whether or not the terrorists are home-grown, when we trace their roots, they almost all end up back in this border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan, whether they’re from the United States or Somalia or the United Kingdom or elsewhere.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, told the committee he firmly believed that if the United States were to be hit again by terrorists, as it was on September 11, 2001, “the planning, training and funding for such an attack will emanate” from the Pakistan-Afghanistan region. It is a region with a unique - and deadly-combination of the most dangerous terrorists and the most dangerous technology in the world,” Mullen said. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry observed that while troops in Afghanistan had largely expelled Al-Qaida from that country, today it is the presence of Al- Qaida in Pakistan, its direct ties to and support from the Taliban in Afghanistan and the perils of an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan that drive our mission.”