NEW YORK - With US prodding, Pakistan and India have begun sharing intelligence on extremists in an arrangement that represents unprecedented cooperation between the two nuclear-armed nations, a major American newspaper reported Thursday. In a dispatch from Washington, The Wall Street Journal said US hopes the cooperation will get a lift from the last weeks victory of the incumbent Congress party, a more moderate party than BJP, which is traditionally more hostile to Pakistan. The CIA arranged for New Delhi and Islamabad to share information on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, the banned group blamed for last Novembers terrorist attack on Mumbai, the newspaper said, citing US officials. The two countries are also trading information on Taliban commanders who are leading the insurgency against Pakistans government. America hopes that when India and Pakistan see that they face a common threat in Pakistan based militant groups, the newspaper said and quoted US officials as saying this could make Islamabad put more focus on the battle at home. We have to satisfy the Mumbai question, and show India that the threat is abating, the official involved in developing Washingtons South Asia strategy said. India and Pakistan traded military threats across their border in the wake of the Mumbai attacks. Intelligence sharing on Mumbai has led to a somewhat more frequent exchange of information, US and Pakistani officials were cited as saying. India and Pakistan have shared a lot of information with each other about the Mumbai attack, said an unnamed official at Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. He said the CIA was initially used as a conduit but the two countries now work directly with each other, while keeping the CIA in the loop. The official cautioned, We are not going to tell them everything we know and they are not going to tell us everything they know. Nobody expects that to happen. A US official said Washington is not under any illusions about the difficulty of erasing decades-old suspicions between India and Pakistan, but sees some progress. US officials hope that a calming of tensions can allow Indias Congress Party government, strengthened by its election victory, to resume peace talks with Pakistan. Some US officials believe Lashkar-e-Taiba orchestrated the assault specifically to undermine the peace process. The US has been concerned that Lashkar could carry out a second strike on India in a bid to stoke a war, it said. The US also sometimes bring intelligence on Pakistans effort to combat militants to Indias attention, with Pakistans consent. Examples include showing Indian officials evidence of progress against militants in the Pakistani regions of Bajaur, Swat and Buner. The CIA arranged for New Delhi and Islamabad to share information on Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Wall Street Journal reported citing US officials. US intelligence officers have been able to track the whereabouts of key Pakistani Taliban leaders, such as Baitullah Mehsud, accused of orchestrating the murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, according to the dispatch. Sufi Muhammad and Maulana Qazi Fazlullah, leaders of a group aligned with Mehsud, are also tracked, the paper said. Sufi Muhammad brokered the now-defunct deal between the government and the Taliban to enforce Sharia law in the Swat. The government of President Asif Ali Zardari is hoping that Congresss victory can also provide the Indian government with the political cover to move one or two divisions away from the Pakistan border in coming months, the paper said, citing an unnamed official briefed on the diplomacy. But Indian officials say they arent ready to do so. An Indian government official, according to the report, said New Delhi has documented an escalation of cross-border infiltrations by militants into Kashmir.