INDIA SAYS it is keeping open the option of a military strike against Pakistan, which it blames for last month's terrorist attack on its financial and film capital, Mumbai, in which over 175 people died.
"Terrorism remains a scourge for our region," said foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee said at the weekend. "If a country [Pakistan] cannot keep the assurances that it has given, then it obliges us to consider the entire range of options that exist to protect our interests and people from this menace."
On Saturday Mr Mukherjee and defence minister AK Antony attended a meeting of India's three service chiefs and senior security officials in which an audit of all possible scenarios against Pakistan was evaluated.
The Indian Air Force has deployed MiG-29 combat aircraft at the Hindon air base on the outskirts of the federal capital New Delhi as protection against any incursion from neighbouring Pakistan who it blames for last month's terror strikes in Mumbai.
India, backed by the US and Britain, claims the 10 gunmen who attacked Mumbai's two luxury hotels, a nearby Jewish Centre and the city's main train stations, belonged to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-i-Taiba (LiT or Army of the Pure) radical Islamist group.
Pakistan denies these claims.
India's military, meanwhile, continues to maintain a state of high alert following the Mumbai terror strikes with its frontline fighters armed and its warships deployed even though senior leaders have claimed war was not a solution.
The air force is maintaining its fighters in a state of operational readiness at strategic bases along the Pakistani frontier in passive air defence mode.
In this formulation frontline combat aircraft have been fitted with precision guided munitions and moved into bomb-proof pens for immediate deployment.
Radar and air defence batteries have also been activated along the 4,000km frontier with Pakistan, a large proportion of it in the Himalayas. Alongside, warships from India's largest Western Naval Command at Mumbai have also deployed across the Arabian Sea with enough resources to last them several weeks. Leave for defence personnel has been curtailed.
The 2002 confrontation, in which both sides amassed over one million troops backed by artillery and armour formations following the attack on India's parliament which was also blamed on the LiT, threatened to escalate into a nuclear conflagration leading to large-scale evacuation of foreign nations from either side.
Since independence the neighbours have fought three wars and an 11-week border engagement in 1999 after the two sides developed nuclear weapons capability.
Meanwhile, the Taj Mahal and the Trident-Oberoi hotels that were attacked by the terrorists reopened yesterday. Guests began trickling into the Trident in the morning with about 100 of the 550 rooms booked and all four restaurants operational for the first full day of business in just over three weeks.
Earlier a private, multi-faith ceremony "to pray for solace and a safer future in the days ahead" was held at the Trident.
At the Taj, more than 1,000 guests, including leading businessmen and celebrities, attended a private reception before the evening reopening of 268 rooms and seven restaurants in the 105-year- old waterfront hotel.
As an added incentive, Taj guests were being ferried in from Mumbai's airport in Jaguars which are also owned by Ratan Tata, chief executive of the Tata Group and the hotel's owner.
Tata has vowed to restore the Taj to its former glory after it was ravaged by fire, bullets and grenades as gunmen fought commandos in a see-saw battle lasting almost three days.