LONDON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday called on Pakistan to show "absolute" cooperation and "total transparency" with India in the investigation of who was behind the Mumbai attacks.
"I don't want to jump to any conclusions myself on this, but I do think that this is the time for a complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that is what we expect," she told reporters accompanying her.
India's Deputy Home Minister Shakeel Ahmad said Monday that the Mumbai attackers were all from Pakistan -- the strongest such claim since the bloodbath that left more than 170 people dead.
Speaking at the start of a trip which will include a hastily-arranged visit to India, she added: "It is extremely important that there would be the highest levels of cooperation between Pakistan and India at this point and that means all institutions.
"And I assume that there is going to be a law enforcement cooperation as well as intelligence cooperation in getting to the bottom of this," she added, before arriving in London.
She added: "What we are emphasising to the Pakistani government is the need to follow the evidence wherever it leads and to do so in the most committed and firmest possible way."
Suspicion has fallen on Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is fighting Indian control of disputed Kashmir and was behind the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi which pushed the neighbours close to war.
Rice, who will also visit Brussels for a NATO meeting during her tour, was due to hold talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband during her stay in London on Monday.
The White House announced Sunday that Rice will travel to New Delhi on Wednesday, as a show of "solidarity with the people of India" following the Mumbai attacks.
"The president has asked me to do that to express our sympathies and our solidarity with the Indian people and to express our absolute determination to help them in any way that we can to help end this serious threat and bring those who perpetrated this horrible tragedy to justice," Rice said.
"We share the grief and anger of the Indian people. But of course Americans were also killed in this attack and they were killed deliberately because they were Americans and that makes this of special interest and concern to the United States."