Washington :Indian-Americans strongly condemned last week's terrorist attacks on US targets as "acts of barbarism" and said that their community, especially Sikhs, had been victims of backlash in the United States.

The Indian Embassy contacted the White House yesterday to express its grief over the death of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh killed in his gas station in Arizona Saturday. His family has said the attack was ethnically motivated. Ambassador Lalit Mansingh spoke to the US administration "underlining the need to prevent any such crime against persons of Indian origin." The embassy said it was "assured of full cooperation at the highest level."

Standing before a large US flag and sporting red, white and blue ribbons on their lapels, a number of Indian-American leaders gathered to call for tolerance around the country following terror attacks on sites in New York and Washington. "As the loss of life on Tuesday has not differentiate amongst Americans based on race, ethnicity and religion, we plead that the living not make that mistake," said Jayant Kalotra, an Indian-born businessman.

Some immigrants in the United States, especially Muslims and Arab-Americans, have been singled out for verbal and, in some cases, physical abuse in the last week. Such abuse has also been reported against Sikh-Americans who wear beards and turbans. Without naming specific cases, Federal Bureau of Investigation director Robert Mueller said yesterday that the agency was investigating "possible" ethnically motivated murders.

Among those claiming harassment was Sher Singh, who was arrested on a train in Providence, Rhode Island the day after hijackers crashed commercial airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and western Pennsylvania, leaving some five thousand feared dead. Singh said he was yanked from the train at gunpoint and interrogated, he believes, because of his turban and long beard. Singh was found to have no connection to the terrorists being sought and was released later the same day. He called for tolerance as the country grieves its devastating losses appealed for the United States to "unify as one. "We must show terrorists that our nation has unconquerable resolve and harmony, not internal destruction," he said.

But Mueller denied that authorities were interrogating people based on their ethnicity. "We do not, have not, will not target people based solely on their ethnicity, period, point blank," he said.In New Delhi, some 1,000 Sikhs gathered yesterday to protest against attacks on their community in the United States.