Nearly 180 people were killed in Mumbai's serial blasts, police say.

The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says that Mr Singh's comments represent a hardening of positions against Pakistan for the first time since Tuesday's attacks.

But with the investigations making little tangible progress, our correspondent says the Indian government is under increasing pressure to act and demonstrate that it is not a soft target.

Pakistani has denied involvement in the blasts.

Gen Musharraf has condemned the loss of "precious lives" in the attacks, in which seven commuter trains were bombed in less than 15 minutes.

But in the days since, there have been sharp exchanges between government ministers in India and Pakistan.

On Thursday night, Gen Musharraf said: "I assure Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the Pakistan government and I myself are with him in any investigation he wants to carry out."

'No stone unturned'

Mr Singh said on Friday that "acts of terrorism" were "despicable acts of desperate people".

"We will leave no stone unturned in ensuring that terrorist elements in India are neutralised," he told journalists at a news conference after visiting bomb victims.

Suspicions that Pakistan-based militants may have been involved have raised tensions between the two states.

Indian security officials have suggested that the Mumbai bombings bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Kashmiri militant group operating from Pakistan.

But the Indian government has not directly accused the group which has denied any responsibility.

A Muslim organisation banned in India, the Students' Islamic Movement (Simi), has also denied involvement in the attacks.

Sketches of three men wanted over the bombings have been published in the Indian media, but officials have admitted they have been making slow progress with investigations.

Prime Minister Singh flew into Mumbai on Friday amid tight security and immediately drove to the Sion hospital where he met some of the blast victims.

"The prime minister was saying to the patients 'what you want, I will give you,'" Agnes George, who was visiting one of the injured, told the AFP news agency.

Nuclear rivals Pakistan and India began peace talks in January 2004.

They followed a prolonged period of tension after militants attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001. That attack led to both sides amassing troops along their border.

Although both sides have made some progress in improving travel and other ties between them, there has been little sign of progress in solving their core dispute over the divided territory of Kashmir, which both countries claim.

A host of global troubles is following Bush ahead of his visit to Russia on Friday.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Bush was certain to discuss Israel's attacks on Lebanon and the counterattacks on Israel when he meets first with Putin and then over the weekend with other members of the G-8: Germany, Britain France, Italy, Japan and Canada.

Rice told reporters it seemed likely those countries would issue a statement on the rising violence in the Middle East.

"You know how the G-8 is. It's unthinkable that these leaders could get together and not discuss what's going on there," she said.

She said a three-person team sent by the United Nations to the region should get a chance to try to defuse the crisis.

"Everybody is very focused on helping the U.N. general secretary's mission," she told reporters in a news briefing.

At the same time, she said, "We don't want to send confusing signals. The too many cooks in the kitchen is one we want to avoid."

Bush planned to have dinner Friday with Putin after arriving in St. Petersburg.

Bush and Putin are meeting as U.S. and Russian negotiators try to conclude a deal to let Russia join the World Trade Organization. The presidents could announce it as early as Saturday.

Russian officials cited a breakthrough in the talks, but U.S. officials said some tough issues remained.

Before dinner with Putin, Bush was meeting with 20 civil society activists. They are involved in promoting human rights, education, environmental protection, public health and other issues.

Bush defended Israel's attacks in Lebanon on Thursday but raised concerns that they could weaken or topple the fragile government in Beirut.

Rice met with reporters and put even more emphasis on the need to not jeopardize Lebanon's fledgling Democratic government.

"It is extremely important that Israel exercise restraint in its activities of self-defense," she said after a day of telephone diplomacy with leaders of the region.

Bush's strong support of Israel put him at odds with
European Union allies two days before U.S. had sought a united stand at the G-8 summit against Iran's nuclear ambitions and North Korea's long-range missile test.

The Israeli attacks on Lebanon were criticized by both G-8 members Russia and France.

Russia and the United States have resolved a key issue over Russia's acceptance to the World Trade Organization, and a final agreement could be signed by the end of the week, some Russian officials said Thursday.

But Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, said, "There still are some sticky issues that have to be resolved." He said he understood the Russia desire to have an announcement during Bush's visit, but that they weren't quite there yet.

Bush finished his German visit by joining Chancellor Angela Merkel for a wild boar barbecue feast at a restaurant in the small village of Trinwillershagen. He told invited guests that, coming from Texas, being treated to a barbecue was "one of the greatest compliments."

"Let's go eat," he said, then shook the hands of hunter and restaurant owner Olaf Micheel and sliced several pieces off the boar on it spit and served them to guests.

The fight between the Metropolitan Police and Mr Blair's inner circle came as Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates was to meet senior MPs in private to discuss the progress of the probe.

The arrest of Lord Levy, Labour's chief fundraiser who secured the controversial £14 million worth of undeclared loans for the party before the last election, stunned Westminster.

His solicitors issued a statement saying he was more than happy to co-operate with the inquiry and was surprised and angry the police used their powers of arrest when he turned up to be interviewed at a London police station.

Lord Levy was being interviewed by detectives again today.

He answered bail this morning and was being interviewed at a London police station, believed to be Colindale.

Some Labour MPs think it is no coincidence the arrest came as Mr Yates was preparing to meet the House of Commons Public Administration Committee to update them on the matter.

The all-party group has agreed not to question key witnesses while the investigation was proceeding, but has warned that if it doesn't see signs of progress it will break the agreement and go-ahead with a hearing.

Mr Yates was expected to tell them that the probe could go on till September as officers from the Met specialist crime directorate sifted through documents obtained from Lord Levy yesterday.

They are also using specialist software to go through e-mails between Labour and potential donors including tracking down those that have been deleted.

Lord Levy was the second person linked to Labour to be arrested and bailed without charge, following headmaster Des Smith's interview after he claimed that supporting Mr Blair's pet city academy projects in England could guarantee a peerage.

The investigation by the police under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 is a result of claims that Labour donors and lenders were being nominated for peerages of a result of their financial generosity.

Three days ago it was claimed that Lord Levy had told one of the four lenders to Labour, curry tycoon Sir Gulam Noon, that he need not declare the loan to the committee vetting his nomination to become a member of the House of Lords.

Despite Downing Street's denials that Mr Blair would be investigated, opposition politicians claimed it was now inevitable.

Tory Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said he expected Mr Blair to be questioned in person.

He said: "The police are clearly taking this seriously. , It must be pretty worrying for the top ranks of the Labour Party."

SNP leader Alex Salmond said: "Lord Levy is Tony Blair's personal friend, his bag man, his fundraiser, his personal envoy to the Middle East.

"It is inconceivable that Lord Levy could be up to anything - if indeed he was up to anything - without the knowledge and consent of the Prime Minister.

"I think, therefore, we can say that the waters are lapping around the Prime Minister's ankles."

Already, researchers have discovered a Russian documentary showing Pablo Picasso digging a trench in a Madrid park, and they have found French secret police reports on Republican exiles and British diplomatic reports on General Francisco Franco before he came to power. The documents will be stored at a new Centre for Memory in Salamanca.

They are a symbol of an increasing desire in Spain to talk more openly about what happened during the war. Before, a pacto de olvido (or "collective pact of forgetting") was adopted to ensure the country could move on after Franco's death in 1975.

Ten million documents held in Russian military archives could provide clues to how much military aid Stalin gave to the Republican government. New light may also be cast on one of the most intriguing and controversial episodes of the war - the fate of 400 tons of Spanish gold that was shipped to Moscow to pay for arms, but which exiles claimed had been stolen by Stalin.

The historian Enrique Moradiellos told the Spanish daily El Pais: "What we want to see are the files of Marshall Voroshilov on Operation X, the Soviet plan to aid the Republic. If you want to know about Russia's influence, you have to go there." The Russian archives also contain information about the International Brigades, which included British volunteers such as George Orwell and detailed accounts of the defence of Madrid.

Ramon Cruz, the culture ministry's deputy director of archives, said: "They aren't just films about fighting, a lot of it is about ordinary people, recording how they lived during the war."

Apart from the surprising footage of Picasso, researchers found film of a Communist hero, Dolores Ibarruri, known as "La Pasionaria", who rallied Republican troops.

Files held in Britain include personal correspondence from the Duke of Alba, Franco's ambassador in London during the war, and the verdict of British diplomats in Spain on Franco.

Mr Moradiellos said: "The British diplomatic service was the best in the world at that time, the most extensive and best trained.

"They produced an annual report on the country which included a section called 'living personalities' giving an idea of what they thought of Franco in 1935."

Secret police reports from France detailed the political activities of Republicans who fled after the war. They include information on exile associations, inside 30 boxes from the Spanish Federation of Deportees and Political Prisoners.

Rogelio Blanco, another historian, said: "There are files on all the survivors, their pension details, photographs and publications, even the German concentration camps they were sent to." The account of passengers on the ship Winipeg, chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda to take 2,000 refugees to his native Chile in 1939, is also to be given to Spain.

Apparently white lies are an acceptable, even necessary, part of many lives - even though we dislike the idea of lying.

Rebecca Campbell knew exactly what she was doing when she recently told her 4-year-old son that there were no more cartoons on TV. And she didn't like it. "One day, he'll probably figure it out," she says. "There are cartoons on all the time!"

But, says the 25-year-old mother from Quincy, Ill., "We couldn't have the TV on all day." Deep in her heart, she knew that telling him the truth would have been better, though more time-consuming, as discipline often is. "It's the easy trap of a lie," she says ruefully. "It's easier than telling the truth."

Which is, of course, why new haircuts receive so many compliments, notes Teresa Velin, a mother in Palm Desert, Calif.

Velin says it was just too darned hot and she didn't feel up to getting dressed and leaving home for a recent movie date. So she told a friend she was busy. "I'm not always as busy as I appear to be," says Velin, 27. "But I don't want to ruin a friendship over a broken movie date."

Nearly two-thirds of Americans agree. In the AP-Ipsos poll, 65 percent of those questioned said it was sometimes OK to lie to avoid hurting someone's feelings, even though 52 percent said lying, overall, was never justified.

Among those 52 percent, if he'd been alive and reachable, would have been the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who believed all lying was bad - every single lie, even one that could save someone's life.

But most moral philosophers would disagree, assures noted ethics columnist Randy Cohen, who himself is so far from the Kantian view as to proudly proclaim: "I'm a big fan of lying."

"Not only is lying justified, it is sometimes a moral duty," says Cohen. An obvious example is when you're lying to protect someone from serious harm. But much less extreme cases often call for lies, Cohen says.

An example he likes: Your fictional spouse, about to accept a Nobel prize, asks if they look fat. "If you're on the way to the award ceremony, you say, 'You look fabulous,'" Cohen instructs. "Anything else would be cruel." If you're still in the hotel room, a suggestion of a different outfit might be appropriate.

Still, every lie has its cost, Cohen says, and that's just another factor you need to consider. One key cost is credibility: Once a person finds out you lied, you lose currency in their eyes.

For Harold Smith, it was worth the risk when he lied to his adult daughter about his health when undergoing treatment for a kidney tumor. "Why get her all traumatized?" says Smith, 64, of Pioneer, Calif. "I tried to protect her. It slowed down the anxiety. Later, I told her what really happened."

In the poll of 1,000 adults taken June 23-27, four in 10 people said it was OK sometimes to exaggerate a story to make it more interesting, and about a third said it was OK to lie about your age. (In interviews, though, some specified that meant lying backward in time, not forward, as in trying to get past the drinking age.) The poll was taken June 23-27 and had a margin of error of plus or minus three points.

A third also said it was OK to sometimes lie about being sick to take a day off work. Very few would admit to thinking it was OK to lie on a resume, cheat on taxes or lie to a spouse about an extramarital affair.

Among the groups more likely to say lying was sometimes OK: people aged 18-29, college graduates and those with higher household incomes. "People have this idea that lying is bad," says Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara who's studied the phenomenon of lying. "But when you really start going through it, it's not that simple."

In a study in the late '90s, DePaulo asked 77 college students and later, 70 people in the Charlottesville, Va. community to track every lie, however small, in a journal for a week. Of the 77 students, only one reported having told no lie. Of the other 70 people, six made that claim.

"People who say lying is wrong are often thinking in the abstract," DePaulo says. "In our real lives, we can't always pick honesty without compromising some other value that might be as important" - like maintaining a happy relationship. If you're at a party and your partner is saying something you disagree with, for example, you might stay quiet, in the name of marital harmony.

Of course, there are inherent problems with any study that asks people to be honest about, well, being dishonest.

In the AP-Ipsos poll, for example, four in 10 people answered that they'd never had to lie or cheat. But one in 10 of THOSE people said in the very next answer that yes, they might have told a lie in the past week.

Which means they might have misunderstood the question - or, ahem, they may have lied.