India says Pakistan bomb role evidence "not clinching"

India has good but not clinching evidence against Pakistan's spy agency for its role in the July serial bombings in Mumbai which killed 186 people, a top security official has announced.

Indian police in September blamed Pakistan's Inter–Services Intelligence (ISI) and militant group Lashkar–e–Taiba, which is fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, for the seven bombs which ripped through commuter trains and platforms in the western commercial hub.

Both Pakistan and Lashkar have denied any involvement.

India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said while the evidence was as good "as we can possibly get in terrorist cases", it could not be called clinching.

"We have connectivity, linkages, confessions. We have a number of arrests which are pretty good," the official told the CNN–IBN television news channel in an interview.

"But there are pieces of the puzzle which are not available. I would hesitate to say we have clinching evidence, but we have pretty good evidence," he said, according to excerpts of the interview released by the channel.

Narayanan said the evidence would most likely be presented to Pakistan during the mid–November talks between the foreign secretaries of the nuclear–armed rivals.

The foreign secretaries are meeting in a bid to revive a peace process which was put on hold by New Delhi after the blasts.

The process was launched in 2004 in a bid to resolve several bilateral disputes including their core historical row over the northern region of Kashmir which is split between the two countries but is claimed in full by both.

A separatist revolt in Indian Kashmir, which Delhi says is supported and fuelled by Pakistan, has claimed more than 45,000 lives since 1989.