NEW DELHI - Pakistan was engaged in ‘whipping up war hysteria’, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Tuesday while calling for a ‘holistic approach’ towards security and a ’strong sense of nationhood’.

India remained steadfastly united even as ‘Pakistan engages in whipping up war hysteria’, the prime minister said while addressing a meeting of chief ministers on internal security.

‘The situation may appear challenging and it is challenging but it is by no means beyond our control,’ Manmohan Singh said.

‘A strong sense of nationhood is important,’ he said, to counter external and internal threats.

‘Unfortunately we cannot choose our neighbours,’ the prime minister said.

‘The terror attack in Mumbai was clearly carried out by a Pakistan-based outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba,’ he said categorically, adding that the military precision displayed was enough evidence to show that it had support from the state.

The security situation over the last 12 months, he said, had ‘become even more complex’.

Asserting that there ‘was an attempt to exploit our vulnerabilities’, Manmohan Singh added that India’s ‘problems are compounded by the fact that we have an uncertain security environment in our neighbourhood’.

The more fragile the government, the more dangerous it was, he said. Pakistan’s responses were an ‘obvious example’.

Admitting that there had been a security lapse in the Nov 26-29 terror attack in Mumbai, he said the sea route was being exploited and explored by terrorists as an alternative to land routes.

‘The terrorists who carried out the attack on Mumbai used the sea route and managed to evade our surveillance.’

According to the prime minister, there was need to review the effectiveness of India’s security set up. A review of the training and equipment for the security forces was also called for.

He said infiltration was also taking place from Bangladesh and Nepal though it had not ceased from the Line of Control (LoC) — that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

The prime minister said that India must ‘implement a policy of zero tolerance’ towards terrorism and few countries had suffered from terror attacks in the way that India had.