Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has branded Pakistan a "mother-ship of terrorism" at a summit of the BRICS nations, testing the cohesion of a group whose heavyweight member China is a close ally of India's arch-rival.
Modi's remarks on Sunday to a meeting of leaders from the BRICS - which include Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa - escalated his diplomatic drive to isolate Pakistan, which India accuses of sponsoring cross-border terrorism.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours have been running high since a September 18 attack on an army base in Kashmir, near the disputed frontier with Pakistan, killed 19 Indian soldiers in the worst such assault in 14 years.
India later said it had carried out retaliatory "surgical strikes" across the de facto border that inflicted significant casualties.
Pakistan denied any role in the attack on the Uri army base, and said the Indian operation had not even happened, dismissing it as typical cross-border firing.
"In our own region, terrorism poses a grave threat to peace, security and development," Modi said in remarks to BRICS leaders who met at a resort hotel in the western state of Goa.
"Tragically, the mother-ship of terrorism is a country in India's neighbourhood," the 66-year-old prime minister said, without directly naming Pakistan, in a series of tweets of his remarks issued by the foreign ministry.
Pakistan accused Modi of misleading his summit partners and of seeking to conceal what it alleged was India's own brutality in the part of Kashmir that it rules, where dozens have died since separatist protests broke out in July.
Modi's hostile comments were not reflected in the closing summit statement he made to reporters, but still made it possible for him to present himself at home as being tough on national security.
Modi's hard line on Pakistan marks a departure from India's tradition of strategic restraint, and New Delhi has won expressions of support from both the West and Russia over the army base attack.
