ISLAMABAD (Pakistan) - ON A trip that was probably her last firefighter's dash into the world's flare-ups, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's emergency diplomacy in South Asia ended without concrete accomplishments.

Dr Rice returned to Washington on Friday after pressing for a public pledge from Pakistan to go after terrorists using the country as a hide out. Pakistan's unsteady US-backed government told her what she wanted to hear, but it's not clear that those leaders can deliver - or even that the United States has much say in how hard they try.

'I found a Pakistani government that is focused on the threat and that understands its responsibilities to respond to terrorism and extremism wherever it is found,' Dr Rice said following sessions with the country's powerful army chief and civilian leaders.

Pakistan's leaders know what's at stake after last week's terror attack in next-door India and have acknowledged their duty to evict terrorists and prevent future attacks, Dr Rice said at the close of a two-day visit to South Asia this week.

In India, Dr Rice delivered US condolences for the more than 170 dead. In Pakistan, she offered a cautionary vision of what rogue terror groups can do. They may attack your old rival today, Dr Rice argued, but tomorrow it could be you.

The attacks on a string of commercial, tourist and religious sites across India's cosmopolitan financial capital showed a breadth of planning, manpower and money that suggests terrorists are learning from al-Qaeda if not directly expanding its franchise.

As Dr Rice said several times this week, the targeting of Americans and other Westerners also made the Mumbai attack 'qualitatively different' for Washington. Six Americans died.

The US wants broader sharing of intelligence and specific actions by Pakistan to dismantle terror groups that have found a comfortable haven in the Muslim country.

The US dispatched its top military officer and top diplomat for back-to-back jawboning Wednesday and Thursday.

India has blamed the attacks on Pakistani militants, and U.S.

officials privately agree. The young civilian government in Islamabad is not implicated, but Dr Rice suggested that was cold comfort. Any nation is at fault, she said, when it allows terrorists to operate from its soil.

On Friday, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emphasised that point, noting that 'the territory of a neighboring country has been used for perpetrating this crime'.

Speaking after meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Dr Singh added that India expects 'the international community to wake up and recognise that terror anywhere and everywhere constitutes a threat to world peace'.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who has vowed full cooperation with India, told Dr Rice the attacks provide a chance to strengthen efforts against terrorism.

'We are looking at this as an opportunity and I intend to do everything in my power,' Mr Zardari said at the opening of a meeting with Rice.

As successor to President Pervez Musharraf, whose ties to the Bush administration may have cost him his job, Mr Zardari is squeezed between outside expectations and internal politics. His control over Pakistan's historically powerful army and intelligence services is untested.

US officials say the intelligence operation has a history of sponsoring militancy and violence, particularly against India, as a means of strengthening its own power.

The beginning of Dr Rice's session with Mr Zardari was open to the press. Reporters were kept away from Dr Rice's first and probably most important meeting on Thursday, with the nation's army chief.

The United States was hopeful the reform-minded Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani would be a tough anti-terror partner and shake up the entrenched intelligence network.

But the media-shy general was his country's strongest critic of US terrorist-hunting raids into Pakistan from Afghanistan this fall.

After a US ground raid in September, Gen Kayani said Pakistan would defend its sovereignty and that there was no deal to allow foreign forces to operate inside its borders.

He said unilateral actions risked undermining joint efforts to battle Islamic extremism and warned that 'the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country will be defended at all cost'. -- AP