(IPS) analysis India's powerful interior minister, Lal Krishna Advani, has indicated that he views Tuesday's terrorist attack on the American Centre in the eastern port city of Calcutta as a sign that Pakistan was not serious about reigning in 'jihadism'.

Speaking at a seminar in the capital shortly after the attack by motorcycle-riding gunmen, which left four policemen dead and scores of other people injured, Advani cited intelligence inputs from agencies under his own ministry to point a finger at the Pakistan army's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence.

Police in Calcutta, capital of the communist-ruled eastern state of West Bengal, said the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Jehadi-Islami (Organisation for Islamic Jihad) has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan has denied Advani's allegations of its involvement in the Tuesday attack. ''These are totally baseless charges. As you know, Pakistan has condemned terrorism in all it forms and manifestations,'' Indian news agencies quoted an official spokesman as saying at press briefing in Islamabad.

Tuesday's attack was certainly not conducive to a de-escalation of a massive military buildup along the Indo-Pakistan border occasioned by a terrorist attack on India's Parliament building on Dec 13 by a heavily-armed suicide squad. India blames the attack, which left 14 people dead, on Pakistan-based groups.

So far, Advani said, he saw no signs of a shift in Pakistan's policy toward the disputed territory of Kashmir, or in its attitude to the pursuit of 'jihadism' outside its own borders.

''India has been bled by cross-border terrorism for far too long,'' the interior minister argued at Tuesday's seminar, which had been called to discuss current threats faced by India.

'Proxy war'

Advani holds the view that Islamabad has been waging a ''proxy war'' against India since 1989 in order to achieve what it cannot militarily the merger of the Indian part of Kashmir with Pakistan along with the third it captured in 1947.

He holds the estimated 50,000 deaths in Kashmir since then on ''Pakistan's use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy'', and hasvowed to put an end to it.

In the current standoff, India has said repeatedly that it would not pull its troops back from the border until it saw signs on the ground that Pakistan was serious about carrying out intentions stated by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in a televised address on Jan 12 that he intended to put an end to 'jihadist' militancy in his country.

Visits to New Delhi by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US Secretary of State Colin Powell have failed to convince New Delhi that it should pull back the close to a million troops it has massed on its side of the border and open diplomatic dialogue with Islamabad.

The US and its allies in the international coalition against terrorism fear that a conflict between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours could divert the stated intention of putting an end to 'jihadism' in nearby Afghanistan.

Tuesday's attack, ironically, took place when the director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert Muller, was in the capital to discuss counter-terrorism with officials of India's own sleuthing agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Indian officials said Muller sought and was given details of the December 1999 hijack by armed militants of an Indian Airlines plane with 150 passengers on board, from Kathmandu in Nepal to Kandahar in Afghanistan.

The plane and the hostages were released in exchange for three 'jihadist' militants caught and jailed in India, including Omar Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin who is a member of the Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami, which claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack in Calcutta.

Financial transactions

Muller told reporters he had no information on financial transactions between Omar Sheikh or the Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami and Mohammed Atta, one of the pilots involved in the Sept 11 aerial attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, except what was provided by Indian officials

''We are interested in whatever information Indian authorities have on al-Qaeda. We will follow up on leads provided by India or any other country which could help us trace the source of finance of terrorist outfits,'' said Muller, who was to fly to Islamabad later Tuesday.

The hijackers of the Indian Airlines plane and the militants later surfaced in Pakistan and are among a list of 20 terrorists that India has demanded extradited as a condition for withdrawing its troops from the border and resuming diplomatic dialogue.

One of them, Maulana Masood Azhar, went on to found the Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed), which is among the organisations ordered banned by President Musharraf in his Jan 12 address.

According to Indian officials, who may not be named, Sheikh's organisation has close links with Dubai-based underworld leader Aftab Ansari, who has been tasked by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence to carry out terrorist strikes in India, including on US installations such as the embassy and consulates.

A spokesman for the US Embassy said that following discussions between Advani and US ambassador Robert Blackwill, the two countries have decided to work together to prevent possible attacks on the embassy here and its consulates and centres across the country.

Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said Tuesday's attack was not completely unexpected. ''We had some apprehensions that have been proved correct. We expect immediate correctives in this regard,'' Singh said when asked by reporters to comment on the attack.