The White House called for calm amid a flurry of diplomatic activity in both Islamabad and New Delhi aimed at easing already badly strained ties, one month after the Mumbai attacks, which India has blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

"We don't want to have aggression with our neighbours. We want to have friendly relations with our neighbours," Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said at his official residence in remarks broadcast on state television.

"I assure you once again that we will not act. We will only react," he added, as he led a special prayer ceremony in honour of two-time former premier Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated one year ago in a gun and suicide attack.

On Friday, Pakistani officials said the military had moved troops from the tribal areas near Afghanistan, where they are fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, to the eastern border with India as a "minimum security" measure.

The senior security and defence officials described the troop movements as "limited" but the news set off alarm bells in New Delhi, where Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned his military chiefs for a strategy session.

India also advised its nationals to avoid travel to Pakistan, saying it was unsafe for them to be in the country.

In Washington, the White House sought to restore calm between the South Asian neighbours, which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

"US officials are in touch with both the Indians and Pakistanis. We continue to urge both sides to cooperate on the Mumbai investigation as well as counterterrorism in general," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told AFP.

"We also do not want either side to take any unnecessary steps that raise tensions in an already tense situation."

Both Islamabad and New Delhi have repeatedly said they do not want war and have called on the other to tone down the rhetoric, but warn they would act if provoked.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee again called on Pakistan to do more to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the banned militant group that New Delhi says masterminded the Mumbai attacks, which left 172 people dead.

"Pakistan should not divert attention from the real issue of taking action against terrorists by raising war hysteria," he told reporters in New Delhi.

Islamabad has said it is willing to cooperate with India in investigating the carnage but says New Delhi has offered no solid proof that Pakistani nationals were involved.

Mukherjee met Friday in the Indian capital with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal, and spoke to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, and Iran's Manouchehr Mottaki, his office said.

Pakistan's Shah Mehmood Qureshi also spoke with the Chinese and Iranian ministers, who pledged their support in efforts to maintain peace in South Asia, Qureshi's office said in a statement.

Ties between India and Pakistan recently sank to their lowest point in late 2001, when militants staged a brazen attack on the Indian parliament -- a strike New Delhi also blamed on Lashkar-e-Taiba.

That attack prompted both sides to deploy hundreds of thousands of troops to the common border but they eventually pulled back following intense international mediation.

On Friday, Pakistani officials said a "limited number of troops" -- local media put the figure at 20,000 -- had been moved to the eastern border near India, and leave had been suspended for armed forces on active duty.

"We do not want to create any war hysteria but we have to take minimum security measures to ward off any threat," a defence ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Any major shift of Pakistani troops out of the tribal areas would likely spark concern in Washington and other Western capitals, as it could open the door to more cross-border militant attacks on foreign forces in Afghanistan.

earlier related report
Pakistan shifts troops to Indian border: officials
Pakistan has redeployed some troops from its restive northwestern tribal areas near Afghanistan to the Indian border amid simmering tensions with New Delhi, senior officials said Friday.

Relations between the South Asian neighbours have been badly strained since the Mumbai attacks, which New Delhi has blamed on Pakistan-based militants. Islamabad says India has not provided it with evidence on which to act.

Both sides have said they do not want war and have asked the other to tone down the rhetoric, but both sides also warn they would act if provoked.

Pakistan's chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas declined to comment but a senior defence ministry official confirmed some troops were being moved from the northwest to the east of the country along the Indian border.

"We do not want to create any war hysteria but we have to take minimum security measures to ward off any threat," he told AFP, adding that leave for some armed forces personnel had been "cancelled as a defensive measure".

A top security official, who asked not to be named, explained that a "limited number of troops have been pulled out from snowbound areas on the western border where they were not engaged in any operation".

The official insisted that the armed forces had only "restricted leave in the forces".

Another senior security official told AFP the new deployments on the Indian border were not in "significant numbers but only in areas opposite the points where India is believed to have brought forward its troops".

The defence ministry official said military authorities had noticed the movement of Indian troops toward the border near the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, and that they believed India had also cancelled military leave.

Any significant cut in troop numbers by Pakistan along its porous western border would likely spark concern in Washington and other Western capitals, as it could open the door to more militant attacks on foreign forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's army and air force have recently scaled back their operations against Taliban-linked militants in both the Swat valley and the Bajaur tribal area bordering Afghanistan. Both operations were launched in mid-2008.

A spokesman for Pakistan's umbrella Taliban group said Friday that if a large number of Pakistani troops were shifted to counter a possible Indian threat, militants would conditionally halt all attacks in the tribal belt.

"We would not only avoid any hostile acts in the tribal territory but also suspend cross-border attacks against foreign forces in Afghanistan," Maulvi Omar, the spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), said by telephone.

The spokesman did not specify how many troops would have to be withdrawn from the tribal areas for his pledge to take effect.

In tandem with the military moves, civil defence authorities have launched a public awareness campaign in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani part of Kashmir, a region ruled by both India and Pakistan but claimed by both in full.

"We have launched an awareness campaign in Kashmir to prepare people for self-defence and response in an emergency situation, amid the looming threat of possible Indian aggression," civil defence official Ghulam Rasool Nagra said.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

New Delhi has said the slow-moving peace process with Pakistan is now on hold in the wake of the attacks in Mumbai, in which 172 people including nine of the gunmen were killed.

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