The United States has not declared the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba as foreign terrorist organisations. A decision is yet to be taken by the US state department with the Indian mission in Washington deliberately jumping the gun to inform reporters that the two groups had been formally designated as terrorist groups in accordance with the recommendation made by US Attorney-General John Ashcroft. Officials in the US embassy here made it very clear that the attorney-general’s recommendation had been made on Friday evening and the US state department was still to consider it as the weekend had come in the way. A decision is expected this week but it might or might not go India’s way. As officials here pointed out, Mr Ashcroft’s recommendation to include Jaish and Lashkar in the proposed list of foreign terrorist groups is “literally that” and not binding in any way on the US state department. Over the weekend, national newspapers based in Delhi had carried banner headlines declaring that the two terrorist groups had been finally placed on the FTO list by the US.