Question time Pak: Who is to blame for Tue's attack?

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's party now paints Pakistan as the Somalia of South Asia. The BJP too sees India's western neighbour as increasingly ungovernable.

The two top guns – Congress’ Pranab Mukherjee and BJP’s L K Advani – met late Tuesday to perhaps evolve a common approach to a common problem.

End the support to terrorists for your own sake was the unequivocal message of India to Pakistan.

"We would request the Pakistani authorities and all concerned not to divert the attention of the international communities to this problem but to address the problem, take courage in both the hands,” says External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Security analysts say the obvious suspect is the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) – a terrorist group which is known to have close links with the LTTE.

The other suspect is the loosely termed Taliban and its various factions.

Taliban regards any sport as non-Islamic.

The interior ministry will give its report in two days and which ever jihadi outfit it points fingers at one thing is clear that the Lahore attack proves that no one safe in any part of Pakistan anymore.

However, there is one more possibility that the attack was executed to open a new domestic front or deflect attention away from 26/11.

A conclusion at this stage would be premature but the targets were clearly foreigners, underscored by earlier attacks on Islamabad's Marriott hotel, the hijacking of NATO supply vehicles and the recent beheading of a Polish engineer.

There's no doubt the Afghan Taliban is extending its influence over its Pakistani counterparts. The Guardian newspaper of London reported a letter from Mullah Omar to the Pakistani Taliban in which he writes - If anybody really wants to wage jihad, he must fight the occupation forces inside Afghanistan. Attacks on the Pakistani security forces is bringing a bad name to Mujahideen and harming the war against the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Last week Mullah Omar got three feuding Taliban chieftains in South and North Waziristan to bury the hatchet. And, days later came the peace deal in Swat with Sharia Law and Islamic courts to be operational next week.

And now Taliban chieftains Beitullah Mehsud, Maulvi Nazir and Gul Bahadur have formed a council to coordinate their operations, not in Pakistan but Afghanistan leaving the uncomfortable thought if Pakistan's descent into Talibanisation is irreversible.