Reflecting anxiety in the region about New Delhi's reaction if it were attacked by a militant group with roots in Pakistan, Gates said restraint by India could not be counted on.

Gates said rebels in Al-Qaeda's "syndicate" -- which includes the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba -- posed a danger to the region as a whole.

They are trying "to destabilise not just Afghanistan, not just Pakistan, but potentially the whole region by provoking a conflict perhaps between India and Pakistan through some provocative act," Gates said on a visit to New Delhi.

"It's important to recognise the magnitude of the threat that the entire region faces," he added following talks with his Indian counterpart A.K. Antony.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and tension spiked again in 2008 when militants -- that New Delhi identified as belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba -- attacked the city of Mumbai, killing 166 people.

India did not mobilise forces, unlike in 2001 when it massed troops on the border with Pakistan after an attack on its parliament.

This drew praise from Gates, but he said such restraint might not be repeated next time.

"I think it's not unreasonable to assume India's patience would be limited were there to be further attacks," Gates warned.

New Delhi suspects the Pakistani intelligence service of supporting terror groups that target India and has consistently called on Islamabad to crack down on militants operating on its soil.

Gates described India as a vital partner in the struggle against extremist threats and said that he had discussed how to bolster US-India military cooperation.

He also lauded India's "extraordinary" financial aid to Afghanistan, but acknowledged the tension this created as both Islamabad and New Delhi vie for influence in Kabul.

"There are real suspicions both in India and Pakistan about what the other is doing in Afghanistan," he said.

"So I think each country focusing its efforts on development, on humanitarian assistance, perhaps in some limited areas of training, but with full transparency for each other, would help allay these suspicions and frankly create opportunities," he said.

On his two-day trip to India, Gates has assured leaders that Washington will not abandon Afghanistan despite a timeline for withdrawing US troops.

Meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, he discussed regional security and offered assurances over the target date of July 2011 for starting a drawdown of American forces, a US defence official said.

Mindful of India's concerns about an early US exit, Gates pledged the United States would remain committed to Kabul with major economic and diplomatic support even as its military presence is gradually scaled back.

In Washington on Wednesday, concern about Lashkar-e-Taiba was voiced by the State Department's counter-terrorism coordinator, Daniel Benjamin, who said the group could become a threat to the West like Al-Qaeda.

"Should it decide that it wants to either compete with Al-Qaeda or supplant Al-Qaeda it would... present itself as an extremely formidable terrorist opponent," Benjamin said.

"It has a target set that Al-Qaeda would find... perfectly fitting. It has an enormous number of men under arms, running into the thousands."

US officials said Gates' visit to India reflected a blossoming relationship that has dramatically transformed since the mutual unease of the Cold War. He heads to Pakistan on Thursday.

earlier related report
Outside View: Hearts and minds ain't it
by Harlan Ullman
Washington (UPI) Jan 20, 2009 - The phrase "winning hearts and minds" is a simplistic and dangerous cliche reflecting a certain naivete in American thinking that everyone yearns to be like us. In the struggle against those who would pervert Islam and use that despicable version of a great religion as a tool for terror, winning hearts and minds should not be our center of gravity. The center of gravity is delegitimizing this perverted view of jihad in the minds of the 99.9 percent of all Muslims who reject terror and the one-tenth of 1 percent who are likely to be seduced by the siren song of al-Qaida. That one-tenth of 1 percent, by the way, numbers about 1.4 million people, roughly the size of the American military.

Regrettably, collectively we have done very little to delegitimize extremism in the eyes of either the world's "peaceful" 1.4 billion Muslims or the 1.3 million potential converts. The reasons for this failure are, in the first case, our inability to create and deliver an antidote acceptable to the many and the belief that those bent on suicide and martyrdom cannot be stopped short of physical means. Sadly, no matter how hard the Bush II administration tried to develop a strategic communications package to that end -- and both Undersecretaries of State Charlotte Beers and then Karen Hughes were thought to have the right stuff to accomplish that mission -- it failed. The Obama administration thus far is doing no better.

The solution to this first challenge is simple to define and perhaps impossible to execute given the dysfunctionality of government and the absence of anyone with enough authority south of the president to make the plan work. But we simply have not spent the time and intellectual resources to develop an effective plan. However, the challenge of deflecting and defeating those who might be targets for suicide and martyrdom is more interesting. In this regard, there is precedent.

During World War II we faced an enemy that saw suicide as both honorable and an effective tactic. Banzai attacks on the part of the Japanese army were paralleled in the air with Kamikazes, translated as "divine wind," crashing their planes against enemy ships and targets. Indeed, as we witnessed in the assault on Guam, Japanese civilians also committed suicide to avoid capture.

For the final invasion of the Japanese mainland, estimates of a million allied casualties were presumed. No one was sure how many Japanese would die or commit suicide. However, that figure was likely to be a substantial portion of the population.

Defeated on land, Japan was being destroyed from the air. Thousands of B-29 bombers in air raids that often lasted all night dropped millions of pounds of bombs including incendiaries that killed upwards of 100,000 Japanese in Tokyo, Nagoya and Haruna. Cut off by the blockade and literally starving, the Japanese showed no sign of surrendering.

Given these realties, the decision to employ the first two atom bombs was clear. After Hiroshima was eviscerated, Japan still fought on. Two days later the destruction of Nagasaki led to deadlock in the War Cabinet. Emperor Hirohito wisely broke that standoff and Japan surrendered unconditionally. Overnight, Japan was transformed from a suicidally oriented society to one that meekly accepted total surrender. The question of how and why that happened is very relevant psychologically to today's threat of jihadist extremists.

Japanese people could understand how a 1,000-plane raid could lay waste to city over the course of a night. They could not, however, understand how one plane and one bomb could replicate that same level of damage. It was the "shock and awe" of the event that reversed the psychology of a suicidal society.

Shock and awe later became the watchwords of a strategic concept that was misunderstood and misapplied by the Bush administration in the opening day of Operation Iraqi Freedom. And, equally unfortunately, the references to the nuclear attacks on Japan were misconstrued by many as the need to use them again to change "hearts and minds." In fact, the basis for shock and awe was drawn from Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. The aim was to get people to do what we wanted or to stop doing what we did not want done. And the incentives ranged from positive reward to the use of force.

Regarding radical jihadists bent on suicide, there may be no countervailing solution. On the other hand, delegitimizing this perversion of Islam and those who would pervert it by leading clerics, scholars and politicians is worthy of analysis. In that regard, Britain's highly effective propaganda campaign against Nazi Germany during World War II is a good case study to be replicated. Unfortunately, no one in the West has seriously undertaken this assessment. This should be among the Obama team's highest priorities.

(Harlan Ullman is senior adviser at the Atlantic Council and chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business. He was co-chair of the group that created the doctrine of shock and awe. His newest book due out this year is "A Modern Version of the Emperor's Handbook for CEOs and Leaders: 12 Principles to Avoid the Pitfalls and Traps That Have Nearly Ruined America.")

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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