Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said today his government would not be able to hold meaningful peace talks with Pakistan if militant attacks continued.
Mr Vajpayee was speaking in Jammu, winter capital of Indian Kashmir, following twin car bombings in Bombay on Monday which killed 52 people and a spate of attacks in Kashmir, where India faces a separatist revolt in its only Muslim-majority state.
Indian police said the Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in the attacks both in Bombay and Kashmir.
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan came close to war last year over Indian allegations, denied by Islamabad, that Pakistan is stoking Kashmiri militancy. Islamabad says it gives only moral support to the Kashmiri "freedom struggle".
But relations have improved slowly but steadily after Mr Vajpayee began a peace initiative in April.
"The process is slow, but that is the policy. We would like to go step by step," Mr Vajpayee said.