NEW DELHI — A senior American envoy sought Wednesday to forge common cause among India, Pakistan and the United States — three countries with a long legacy of ambivalence and animosity among them — saying that their national security interests were endangered by the intensifying threat of the Taliban and other extremist groups.
“For the first time since partition, India, Pakistan and the United States face a common threat, a common challenge, a common task,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the United States special representative for the region, told reporters here on Wednesday.
His comments came after he met with Indian officials to brief them on his trip earlier in the week to Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was his first trip to the region since President Obama unveiled a plan to strengthen the war effort against the Taliban in Afghanistan and goad Pakistan to flush out extremists from its soil. “Now that we face a common threat we must work together,” Mr. Holbrooke said. “We know that is going to be difficult, but the national security interests of all three countries is clearly at stake.”
India and Pakistan have been bitter foes since their partition in 1947. Relations have plummeted since last November’s attack on Mumbai, the Indian commercial capital, formerly Bombay. India and the United States have concluded that the attacks were planned inside Pakistan and carried out by its citizens.
In New Delhi, Mr. Holbrooke said he met privately with Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan’s main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, during his visit to Islamabad on Tuesday. The meeting took place, he said, at the end of a four-way session that included the two men as well as Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is traveling with Mr. Holbrooke, and the Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
While Mr. Holbrooke was meeting with General Pasha, Admiral Mullen continued the session with General Kayani, he said. Mr. Holbrooke described the Pakistani officials as pleased with the American visit. He said their criticisms, made at a news conference afterward, were to be expected.
Indian analysts sharply objected Wednesday to Mr. Holbrooke’s calls for cooperation.
“This equating Pakistan as a pure victim — we don’t buy that,” said Naresh Chandra, a retired Indian diplomat and a former ambassador to the United States. “Let bygones be bygones is O.K. for the United States. Not for us. Until Pakistan has shown credible action, how can he expect India to toe this line? They have to dismantle their terror infrastructure, bring perpetrators of the Bombay attack to book.”
There was no official reaction from the Indian Foreign Ministry to Mr. Holbrooke’s comments.
G. Parthasarathy, also a retired diplomat and a onetime Indian ambassador to Pakistan, described the terrorist challenge of which Mr. Holbrooke spoke as “a creation of the Pakistan Army.”
“The army has neither the will nor the desire to take on the Taliban and extremists with whom they have been associated for the past three decades,” he said.
Pakistan has acknowledged that its citizens were involved in the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 160 people. India says Pakistan has yet to shut down what it calls the infrastructure of terrorist operations inside Pakistan.
Adding to India-Pakistan tensions, there have been stepped-up clashes in recent weeks along the de facto Pakistani-Indian border in disputed Kashmir. In March a particularly blistering firefight left eight Indian soldiers dead, along with several suspected Pakistani militants. Indian officials described them as well-trained guerrillas.
Mr. Holbrooke faces a minefield of Indian sensitivity. India worries that in his bid to secure greater cooperation from Pakistan to crack down on the Taliban, he will try to placate Pakistan’s longstanding anxiety about India. India is particularly sensitive about any potential American effort to nudge the two sides back to the negotiating table — or worse, to lean on it to work out a settlement on Kashmir. India insists on bilateral talks and at its own pace.
Mr. Holbrooke took pains to say he had not come to call for India-Pakistan talks. “We did not come here to ask the Indians to do anything,” he said.
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