US officials have praised India for showing restraint in the face of the attacks, which Indian and US intelligence have linked to a Pakistani-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

But they are worried about the repercussions for US strategy in Afghanistan, which relies on Pakistani support, as well as for the region's stability as a whole if India retaliates, officials and analysts said.

"I think it's important for there to be restraint on both sides, but it's also important to find out who was responsible," US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Tuesday.

"And I think what we would like to see is both countries work together to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again," he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, meanwhile converged on the region for meetings in both countries.

The stakes for the United States in defusing a confrontation between the two countries, which have gone to war against each other three times since partition in 1947, are huge.

Washington has long been trying to persuade the Pakistani military to crack down on Al-Qaeda and other militants in safe havens along the Afghan border and to work more closely with US and Afghan forces on the other side of the frontier.

To be effective over the long-term and to combat a growing internal extremist threat, the US military believes its Pakistani counterparts need to shift to counter-insurgency from a near total focus on a conventional defense against India.

But with the Mumbai attacks, tensions and distrust between the two are soaring again, shattering some modest recent gains in Indian-Pakistani talks over the status of Kashmir.

"That was exactly the terrorist intent -- to destroy them, or to appreciably undermine them," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

"This was an effort to deepen the cleavage between India and Pakistan, to empower more extremist and nationalist elements in both countries, and indeed I think to provoke India to engage in some act of retaliation," he said.

The US military fears that the Pakistani military may now pull forces away from the Afghan border areas to the border with India, leaving insurgent groups to flourish unchecked as happened after a Lashkar-e-Taiba attack on the Indian parliament in 2001.

"That is what is being looked at right now. Will there be repercussions? Hasn't been any yet but this was a very significant incident," a US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

The official said the Pakistanis moved some aircraft and air defense units to the Indian border area but there have been no other overt troop movements by either side.

"They are not surging forces toward the Hindu Kush or the Kashmir region, or the historic hotspots if you will," he said.

"Very much at this point folks are still trying to figure out what happened, who was responsible, who was behind it," the official said.

The US counter-terrorism official said there were "solid indications" that the gunmen who carried out the attacks in Mumbai belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Meeting with Rice in New Delhi, India's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said there was "no doubt" that the militants had come from and were coordinated from Pakistan.

Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency helped found the group in the late 1980s and used it as a surrogate in its struggle with India, experts say.

US officials say there is no evidence at this point linking the intelligence service to the latest operation.

"But there are a lot of questions being asked right now," the military official said.

Hoffman noted that the Mumbai attackers targeted a Jewish community center and reportedly sought out Americans and Britons to kill when they stormed luxury hotels.

"In recent years LeT has become a stalking horse for al-Qaeda, bought into Al-Qaeda's global jihadi vision and this attack was clearly part of that," he said.

If the group's involvement is established and Pakistan is unwilling or unable to act against them, then the risk of Indian retaliation will grow, analysts say.

"I suspect the Indians will think very carefully, weigh the costs and benefits of at the very least limited strikes against Lashkar facilities," said Seth Jones, an expert at the Rand Corporation.

"And then of course, we'll be in a very different situation," he said.

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