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“NATO officials uncovered several instances in which ISI operatives provided intelligence to Taleban insurgents at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels,” the report says.

Indian officials told The Times that they suspected Pakistan’s ISI agency was involved in the embassy blast, but could not prove it and were reluctant to respond too robustly for fear of further destabilising Pakistan.

“The last thing we want to do is to undermine democratic forces in Pakistan – or give them an excuse to come rattling their sabres at us,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

India and Pakistan have been at odds over Afghanistan ever since they won their independence from the disintegrating British Empire in 1947.

Pakistani officials accuse the Indians of deliberately stirring unrest on the Afghan border by supporting Pashtun and Baluch nationalist movements.

India says it is simply trying to help another poor Asian country to turn into a prosperous, stable democracy – and a trade route to Central Asia.

In his latest book, the leading Pakistani political commentator Ahmed Rashid said that the success of India in Afghanistan since 2001: “stirred up a hornet’s nest in Islamabad which came to believe that India was ’taking over Afghanistan’.” In private Indian officials admit that they see Afghanistan as a means to distract and contain Pakistan.

Since 2001, India has pledged an estimated $850 million to Afghanistan, making it one of the country’s biggest international donors.

In 2003, it opened consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar and two other Afghan cities, much to the consternation of the Pakistanis.

There are now an estimated 4,000 Indian citizens in Afghanistan, about 400 of whom are helping to build the Zaranj-Delaram highway through the province of Nimroz.

Several Indians working on the road have been killed in Taleban attacks in the last year.

India had therefore been expecting an attack on its mission and had stepped up security around its perimeter in recent weeks, said Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research “The bombing sends a clear message that under the new army chief, the ISI is not just organising attacks in India but in Afghanistan as well,” he told The Times. “This will have a definite impact on India-Pakistan relations. But we have to respond calmly and strategically. We have to make sure Pakistan’s fledgling democracy is not destabilised.”

Dr Barnett Rubin, an Afghan expert in New York, told The Times: “People tend to depict Afghanistan as a fight between the United States and Islamic radicals, but it is also a theatre for other conflicts and one of those is between India and Pakistan.”

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