ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan told India on Saturday it did not want war and would use force only if attacked -- 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-Qaida threat.
Islamabad also announced it was cancelling all military leave -- the latest turn of the screw in the rising tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours following last month's terrorist 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.
"We don't want to fight, we don't want to have war, we don't want to have aggression with our neighbours," Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in a televised speech.
Still, Gilani said the country's military was "fully prepared" to respond to any Indian attack.
India and Pakistan have said they want to avoid military conflict over the Mumbai attacks, and most analysts say war is unlikely, not least because both sides have too much to lose if conflict breaks out.
But India -- which is under domestic pressure to respond aggressively to the attacks -- has not ruled out the use of force.
Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee accused Pakistan on Friday of trying to divert attention away from what many analysts say is a halfhearted attempt to rein in homegrown terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India accuses of masterminding the Mumbai attacks.
