NEW DELHI: While India today mourned what was probably the most defining act of terrorism on Indian soil a year ago, in sombre ceremonies across the country, Pakistan’s newspapers accused India of seeking to wage war with Pakistan and its PM Yousuf Raza Gilani charged India with fomenting insurgency in Balochistan.

Pakistani newspapers, picking on a comment made by India’s Army chief General Deepak Kapoor, (in which he said India had been too soft on perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre and had let them go, something which ought not happen in future) said India was planning a “limited war” against that country. The army in India is completely under the control of the civilian government, unlike Pakistan, making any decision to go to war entirely a political one.

Given how categorically Indian PM Manmohan Singh has asserted that

Pakistan “has nothing to fear” from India, the suggestions that India was planning for hostilities appears “mischievous”, a senior official said, “intended to further vitiate relations between the people of the two countries.” Having finally acted on yesterday to charge-sheet seven men accused of being responsible for the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008,

Gilani made the accusation while addressing a press conference in Islamabad. He was announcing Islamabad’s new package for the troubled Balochistan province, which not only borders NWFP and Taliban-controlled tribal areas, but has also been racked by an insurgency for several decades by Baloch rebels demanding independence for the province.

India welcomed the framing of charges against the seven men accused of being responsible for the Mumbai attacks last year. The framing of charges means that formal trial proceedings can now begin. However, sources said the non-inclusion of Hafiz Sayeed, the head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, among those accused is “a joke” because India has provided dossiers of evidence to Pakistan pinpointing Sayeed as the mastermind behind the Mumbai attacks. Gilani reiterated that his administration had solid evidence about India’s involvement in the Balochistan province, forcing India to place it in a joint statement after he took up the issue with Singh at the Sharm-el-Shaikh meeting on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit in July.