Hoax call puts Pakistan at Defcon 1 during Mumbai attacks

LA Times:

A hoax caller claiming to be India's foreign minister spoke to Pakistan's president in a "threatening" manner during the final hours of the Mumbai attacks, prompting Pakistan to put its air force on its highest alert for nearly 24 hours, a Pakistani news report said today.

Meanwhile, authorities in India reported the first arrests since the end of the siege in Mumbai, which killed more than 170 people. Two men in the city of eastern city of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, were detained by police and accused of providing the mobile phone cards used by the attackers.

The hoax call and subsequent air force alert reported by the English-language Dawn newspaper underscored the volatile atmosphere between the nuclear-armed neighbors during the 60-hour rampage by gunmen in India's commercial capital that began the night of Nov. 26.

The report also seemed certain to raise new questions about the competence of Pakistan's civilian government, elected less than a year ago. The civilian leadership has already been criticized for initially promising to send the chief of its main spy agency to help in the Indian probe, then hastily reneging after objections from the political opposition and the security establishment.

The newspaper's account said it took intercession by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other diplomats to establish that the Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, had not made the call to President Asif Ali Zardari on the night of Nov. 28.

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The incident reportedly began when a caller who identified himself as Mukherjee urgently requested to speak with Zardari. The two had earlier been in phone contact, and because the situation was so fluid at that point, presidential aides bypassed normal identification checks and put the call through, the newspaper's account said.

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Such a call would be consistent with the strategic purpose of the Mumbai raids. The terrorist would like to force the Pakistan and India into a war to relieve pressure on the Taliban along the Afghan border.