John McCain in Delhi on Tuesday. (Reuters)

New Delhi, Dec. 2: India wants to calibrate its diplomatic moves against Pakistan in its response to last week’s terror attacks in Mumbai before drafting an agenda for coercion, senior government functionaries here are saying.

The demarche and a demand for 20 fugitives from Indian law is the first rung of an escalatory ladder but New Delhi is also seeking to convince the world, primarily the US — whose secretary of state Condoleezza Rice arrives here tomorrow — that it does not want to go for the trigger right away.

A delegation of US senators, including defeated presidential candidate John McCain, returned from meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee with the impression that New Delhi was wary of taking military action despite the public outrage that is putting pressure on the government.

But coercive measures are among options that the government is considering. Leading the muted drumroll is Mukherjee who said today “nobody is talking of military action” (according to a PTI report). But the external affairs ministry clarified later that he has not ruled out any option.

McCain and his colleagues Joe Liebermann and Linsey Graham said they registered the emotional depth with which Prime Minister Singh and Mukherjee talked of the carnage in Mumbai. Asked if such a deep feeling of hurt will not translate into military action, McCain said he “assumed” the governments of India and Pakistan were keen on improving relations.

The seniormost military commander in the country, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, asked if he has got any directive from the Cabinet Committee on Security (which met again for the second time in three days), replied in a media conference: “Even if they give a directive, I am not likely to share it here.”

But Admiral Mehta, who is the chairman of the chiefs of staff committee and the chief of the naval staff, said he understood that the government was getting more resolute.

“There is a sense of purpose. What action will be taken I have no idea. I am sure the government is going to do it in unequivocal terms,” said the admiral.

But it was Mukherjee’s observation that India had noted President-elect Barack Obama’s statement — that a sovereign country has a right to defend itself — that makes Condoleezza Rice’s job in New Delhi difficult.

Asked if India has the right to “take out” high-value targets inside Pakistan with or without the permission of Islamabad, Obama had said in Chicago: “I think that sovereign nations, obviously, have a right to protect themselves.”

But he added: “Beyond that, I don’t want to comment on the specific situation…. I think it is important for us to let the investigators do their jobs and make a determination in terms of who was responsible for carrying out these heinous acts.”

An Indian foreign ministry source said “time will show what will be done and you will know. We appreciate the responses from all over the world, including that of the President-elect of the US. And we will plan our response accordingly after seeing what Islamabad is doing.”

In London, en route to New Delhi, Rice said there was an appreciation of the demand for action in India but she favoured working with Pakistan as well. President George W. Bush may be sending her for the express purpose of asking New Delhi to be restrained.

“In respect of the situation in India, I think that the Indian people, who are like people anywhere in the world when they are struck by terrorism, want to know that their government develops a plan to tackle that terrorism. That does not mean symbolic acts, it means real acts with real partners to affect real change. My conversation with the Indian foreign minister today (December 1) was about these real acts that are going to be necessary not just from India to improve its defences but from its neighbours, notably from Pakistan,” Rice said.

She was asked if the US understood that India has to be seen to respond in a robust fashion after the attacks in Mumbai.

Mukherjee said a demarche had been given to Pakistan and India had demanded the extradition of about 20 persons and was awaiting Islamabad’s reaction to the diplomatic move.

The US senators who met the Prime Minister and the external affairs minister said there was also a need to look into the evidence that India had gathered in the investigations into the attacks. “We don’t have hard evidence yet, certainly not public evidence. We expect complete transparency from the government of Pakistan.”