A worker paints the Taj hotel, one wing of which is scheduled to reopen on Sunday, 25 days after it was attacked by terrorists. Picture by Gajanan Dudhalkar

New Delhi, Dec. 19: The European Union today asked Pakistan to fulfil its counter-terror obligations, mounting further international pressure on Islamabad to act against the plotters of the Mumbai carnage.

The EU added that it would send its anti-terror co-ordinator to India next year to firm up co-operation in the area.

The 27-nation grouping’s special envoy on counter-terrorism, Gille de Kerchove, will arrive in January and receive an update on the Mumbai attack investigations.

“The EU and (its) member states are directly asking Pakistan to fulfil its obligations in the field of counter-terrorism,” French ambassador to India Jerome Bonnafont, whose country now holds the EU’s rotating presidency, told reporters here.

“Pakistan has an obligation to tackle terrorism,” he said at a joint news conference with Czech Republic ambassador Hynek Kmonicek.

“The EU is completely committed to helping India in preventing such attacks by way of information-sharing and enhancing operational co-operation in the field of terrorism.”

Kmonicek, whose country is to take over the EU presidency in January for six months, said the grouping would mount further pressure when the EU-Pakistan summit is held in Islamabad in March.

“It is absolutely clear what must be delivered…. It is in the interests of Pakistan to do so,” Kmonicek said when asked what action the EU would take when his country assumed its presidency.

“Many more steps should be taken. We know we are all co-operating and are on the same road but we haven’t reached the end,” the Czech envoy said.

On November 27, Kerchove had told reporters in Brussels: “Over the last few months we have noted an exponential increase in attacks in India, but these were local. Now we are confronted with an event on a grand scale, and we did not see an event on a grand scale coming.”

Bonnafont stressed the role the EU and its member countries had played in getting the UN Security Council to declare the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a front for the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a terrorist organisation. India accuses Lashkar of organising last month’s attacks in Mumbai.

“We mean business and we will co-operate with India to ensure that such horrible acts do not happen again.”