India's home minister said Pakistan could become a failed state and raised doubts about who was in control of the nuclear-armed country, a news report said yesterday.

Home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram's comments came days after an attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the Pakistani city of Lahore. Heavily armed gunmen killed six police and a driver and wounded several players on Tuesday before fleeing un­scathed.

"In Pakistan, with regret, I would say we don't know who is in control there – whether it is the army or the president or the government," the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Chidambaram as saying at a seminar on Friday.

"It is not a failed state, but it is threatening to become one," Chidambaram said in Mumbai, India's financial and entertainment capital.

Relations between India and Pakistan have deteriorated following the 26 November terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed 164 people.

Separately, India's external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers showed the Pakistani government's "lack of will or capability in tackling this menace".

Yesterday, a bomb-laden car exploded in north-western Pakistan as police were trying to pull a body from the vehicle, killing seven policemen and a passer-by.

It appeared to be the first time militants in Pakistan had targeted security forces by using a body as a lure, and it underscored the challenge facing Pakistan as it tries to root out al-Qaeda, Taliban and other insurgents based along the Afghan border.

The turmoil in the nuclear-armed country is of concern to the US and the West, who need Pakistan to focus on combating militants involved in the fight in Afghanistan.

The explosion occurred in the Badaber area, a small town on the outskirts of the main northwest city of Peshawar, where residents recently evicted a group of militants with help from the police. The move prompted militant threats of retaliation.

Initially, senior police official Safwat Ghayur said a suicide car bomber detonated the vehicle when officers at a roadblock motioned it to stop near the Khyber tribal region, a part of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt where military forces have staged offensives to stem militant activity. But officials at the scene said further investigation showed the police were led to a trap.

gerard siggins
sport, page 16