Washington: December 1, 2008 – IR Summary/TNN - US President George Bush has decided to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to New Delhi on Wednesday with a view to affirming the American support to India after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last week.

Rice has already left for London on Sunday night on a previously scheduled trip to attend a NATO meeting, and will arrive in New Delhi on Wednesday.

"Secretary Rice's visit to India is a further demonstration of the United States' commitment to stand in solidarity with the people of India as we all work together to hold these extremists accountable," the White House said in a statement.

Rice’s visit is also aimed at tempering Indian response toward Pakistan and discussing the best options for India and US to act in concert, analysts reckon. Washington is evidently concerned that any unilaterally punitive measures by New Delhi will undermine the US war on terror on Pakistan’s western front, going by the expression of concern from numerous US lawmakers.

The Bush administration is also expected to send senior military and intelligence officials to Islamabad to ask for action to dismantle the terrorism apparatus fostered by renegades in the ISI.

Rice left Washington even as India’s foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon arrived here to brief US officials about the events in Mumbai and its aftermath. Menon was originally coming here with a wider brief, including possible meetings Barack Obama’s transition team, but the Mumbai massacre and growing evidence of Pakistani fingerprints in the carnage has infused the visit with a more urgent agenda -- getting the U.S to take the problem of Pakistani terrorism more seriously and initiating action to counter it.

Among the actions being considered in informal exchanges is to strive for a UN resolution empowering a coalition of affected countries to dismantle terrorist camps in Pakistan, including in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Countries affected by these camps include the US, U.K, India, China, and Russia, and because of its victims in the Mumbai massacre, several EU countries and Israel. Such a resolution would send a powerful signal to Pakistan’s military, which is alleged to have funded and maintained these terror camps through its intelligence agency ISI, that is has antagonized the whole world.

In a pointed statement over the weekend, President Bush said the ''leaders of India can know that nations around the world support them in the face of this assault on human dignity. And as the people of the world's largest democracy recover from these attacks, they can count on the world's oldest democracy to stand by their side.''