The warning came after the US in March said it would deliver unarmed drones to Pakistan and less than a month after it unveiled plans to transfer 600 million dollars to Islamabad to pay for anti-militant operations.

A. K. Antony told reporters in New Delhi that India's concerns had been conveyed to Washington.

"Even though the US is giving equipment to Pakistan to fight against the Taliban, we feel there is every possibility of (Pakistan) diverting most of them to the Indian borders," Antony said.

"We have already conveyed our concerns about transfer of equipment to Pakistan. We told the US that they have to be careful about that," the Indian defence minister added.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi moved quickly to ease India's fears, saying the hardware would be used only against militants, who have been blamed for bomb attacks killing more than 3,300 people in his country.

"The military equipment that we are getting from the United States should not worry India, because it is meant for counter-terrorism and to enhance our capacity to fight terrorist networks," he told reporters in Lahore.

"They (India) should not be afraid of this because it will be used against terrorist networks who have made this region unsafe."

Pakistan, Washington's frontline ally in its battle against militancy, has domestically produced surveillance drones but it told the United States in March that it wanted sophisticated US-made aircraft.

The Pentagon soon said it would deliver "within a year" around a dozen unarmed drones to Islamabad to aid its fight against Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in Pakistan.

The United States has said 600 million dollars would be paid to Pakistan to reimburse it for the operations over the past year against Islamist extremists.

India's military insists that some of the US-supplied hardware and funds have been siphoned away by Pakistan allegedly to buttress its arsenal against its estranged South Asian neighbour.

The two countries have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947.

earlier related report
Two NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan
Kabul (AFP) May 7, 2010 - Two NATO soldiers were killed in separate attacks in southern and eastern Afghanistan during the last 24 hours, the military said Friday, taking the death toll for the year to date to 184.

One died in an "insurgent attack" while another was killed by indirect fire, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said, without giving the nationality of either victim.

There are around 130,000 foreign troops serving in Afghanistan, which is in the grip of a bloody insurgency waged by remnants of the Taliban since they were overthrown in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

More than two thirds are from the United States, which is deploying thousands of reinforcements in an effort to end a war that is claiming record fatalities among foreign troops.

In 2009, 520 foreign soldiers lost their lives in the violence, making it the deadliest year since the Taliban regime was overthrown in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

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