NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD: India demanded Pakistan take strong action against those behind the siege of Mumbai that left more than 200 people dead, as new details emerged yesterday about the gunmen and the survival training that enabled them to thwart Indian commandos.

The United States called on Pakistan to fully cooperate with investigations into the attack, which has strained relations between the two countries. The White House, however, said it had heard nothing from investigators so far to suggest Pakistani government involvement.

Pakistan’s high commissioner to India was called to the Foreign Ministry and told that “elements from Pakistan” had carried out the attacks, ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash told reporters. The high commissioner was told that India “expects that strong action would be taken against those elements.”

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Pakistan to “follow the evidence wherever it leads.” “This is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that’s what we expect,” said Rice.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari called the attackers “non-state actors,” and warned against letting their actions lead to greater enmity in the region. “Such a tragic incident must bring opportunity rather than the defeat of a nation,” Zardari said in an interview with Aaj Television. “We don’t think the world’s great nations and countries can be held hostage by non-state actors.”

Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir repeated Pakistan’s condemnation and its offer of cooperation in a meeting with India’s high commissioner in Islamabad. He rejected Indian media reports of Pakistani involvement. “The foreign secretary refuted the unsubstantiated allegations by the Indian media of Pakistan’s complicity in the Mumbai incident,” Bashir’s ministry said.

Islamabad has warned that if tension with New Delhi escalates, it would have to move troops from its Afghan border — where it is battling Al-Qaeda and Taleban — to the Indian border. That would be a serious blow to US-led efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and defeat Al-Qaeda.

As tension with India has grown, Pakistan drummed up international support. Zardari spoke to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who offered to help reduce tension. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has summoned political leaders to a national security conference today to build a consensus, his office said. Back in Mumbai, soldiers removed the last victims’ bodies from the shattered Taj Mahal hotel yesterday, searching each room in the labyrinthine building and defusing booby-traps and bombs left by the gunmen. Security forces declared the 565-room landmark cleared of booby-traps and bodies.

“We were apprehensive about more bodies being found. But this is not likely — all rooms in the Taj have been opened and checked,” said Maharashtra state government spokesman Bhushan Gagrani.

The only gunman known to have survived, Ajmal Qasab, told investigators the gunmen trained over about six months at Lashkar-e-Taiba camps near Karachi and another area of Pakistan, according to two security officials familiar with the probe. The men, between the ages of 18 and 28, received rigorous training in close-combat techniques, hostage taking, handling of explosives, satellite navigation, and high seas survival skills, the officials said.

Meanwhile, a Muslim graveyard in Mumbai yesterday rejected the bodies of the nine dead attackers. “People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim,” said Hanif Nalkhande, a trustee of the influential Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre Bada Qabristan graveyard in downtown Mumbai. “Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime.” Mumbai returned to normal yesterday to some degree, with parents dropping their children off at school and many shopkeepers opened their doors for the first time since the attacks began.