No coaxing over troop pullback: India, US

Senior officials of the Ministry of External Affairs and the US embassy in New Delhi denied a report by NDTV saying that the US had asked India to pullback troops from the Pakistan border, reports HT Correspondent.

Senior officials of the Ministry of External Affairs and the US embassy in New Delhi denied a report by NDTV saying that the US had asked India to pullback troops from the Pakistan border.

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A spokesperson of the US embassy told HT: "The US categorically denies this report. There is no pressure on India on troop level." A senior MEA official also denied the report.

"India has told the US that Pakistan is responsible for tension between the two countries. India has also told the US that it hadn't deployed extra troops after the Mumbai attacks. Rather it was Pakistan, which has sent thousands of troops," the NDTV report said.

India has conveyed to the US that Pakistan-based terrorist groups were not only a threat to the two nations but to the entire world.

Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, who recently returned from Washington after holding detailed discussions with senior US government officials, in an interview to the All India Radio said, "I think it is clear this sort of terrorism out of Pakistan is a global menace. Not only a threat to India or a threat to the US, it is a threat to the entire globe."

"We also discussed what we could be doing in terms of international action, whether in terms of listing more entities and individuals in the UN Security Council list of terrorist organisations and their supporters; you know like we listed Jamaat-ud-Dawah last December... actually it is very important that Pakistan decides to stop using these elements as instruments of state policy abroad in Afghanistan or in India," Menon said.