Pakistan tries to reduce tension with India

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan told India yesterday that it did not want war and was committed to fighting terrorism - a move apparently aimed at reducing tensions after Pakistan moved troops toward their shared border.

Intelligence officials said Friday that the army was redeploying thousands of troops from the country's fight against militants along the Afghan border to the Indian frontier - an alarming scenario for the West as it tries to get Pakistan to neutralize the al-Qaeda threat.

Islamabad also announced it was canceling all military leave - the latest turn of the screw in the rising tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors following last month's terror attack on the Indian financial capital of Mumbai.

India has blamed Pakistani militants for the terrifying three-day siege. Pakistan's recently elected civilian government has demanded that India back up the claim with better evidence but has also said it is committed to fighting the "cancer" of terrorism.

"We ourselves have accepted that we have a cancer," said Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in a televised speech yesterday. "They are forcing their agenda on us."

Zardari has pledged to battle militancy, repeatedly reminding critics that his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was herself killed in a gun-and-suicide bomb attack blamed on terrorists.

In the four months since Zardari took power - picking up the reins of the Pakistan People's Party in the wake of Bhutto's death - Islamist violence has continued largely unabated.

Many analysts have speculated that the assailants who carried out the Mumbai attacks sought to distract Pakistan by redirecting its focus toward India and away from the military campaign against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants on the Afghan border.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said yesterday that it was unfortunate that a "sort of war hysteria" has been created in Pakistan.

"I appeal to Pakistan and Pakistani leaders, do not unnecessarily try to create tension," he said, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. "Do not try to deflect the issue. A problem has to be tackled face to face."

Pakistan's latest moves, including the troop redeployment, were seen as an indication that it will retaliate if India launches air or missile strikes against militant targets on Pakistani soil - rather than as a signal that a fourth war between the two countries was imminent.

The United States has been trying to ease the burgeoning crisis while also pressing Pakistan to crack down on the militants who Washington says were likely responsible for the Mumbai attack. The siege left about 170 people dead after gunmen targeted 10 sites.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials - requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation - said Friday that elements of the army's 14th Infantry Division were being redeployed from the militant hotspot of Waziristan to the towns of Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border.

The military began the troop movement Thursday and plans to shift a total of 20,000 soldiers - about one-fifth of those in the tribal areas, they said without providing a time frame.

Witnesses reported seeing long convoys carrying troops and equipment toward India on Thursday and Friday, but there was no sign of fresh movement yesterday, suggesting the country was not rushing the troops to the frontier.

The army has refused comment on any troop movement, but a senior Pakistani security official on Friday denied that soldiers were being deployed to the Indian border.