The United States and Russia led calls for calm in both Islamabad and New Delhi in a bid to improve ties that have deteriorated in the month since the Mumbai attacks, which India has blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

"We have lost our people -- we do not talk about war, we do not talk about vengeance," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in a speech on the first anniversary of the assassination of his wife, former premier Benazir Bhutto.

"Dialogue is our biggest arsenal," he told ministers and lawmakers in remarks broadcast live on state television, saying negotiations were "the solution to the problem of the region."

But Zardari warned India not to push Islamabad too hard for action against extremist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which New Delhi says masterminded the attacks in Mumbai that left 172 people dead.

"We have non-state actors. Yes, they are forcing an agenda on us," the Pakistani leader said.

But on the subject of future action against such movements, he said: "We shall do it because we need it, not because you want it."

"This mettle has been tested many times. Please do not test it again... Allow us the freedom of democracy, allow us the freedom of choice," he said.

"We will cure it, we will solve it, we will correct it."

Relations between the South Asian neighbours -- which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir -- hit a low point Friday when top Pakistani officials announced troops were moving east.

They said the military had moved a "limited" number of troops from the tribal areas near Afghanistan, where they are fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, to the eastern border with India. Leave was cancelled for soldiers 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.

But the news set off alarm bells in New Delhi, where Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned his military chiefs for a strategy session and the foreign ministry advised citizens to avoid travel to Pakistan.

The reactions in both capitals unleashed a flurry of warnings and diplomatic activity, led by the United States.

"We also do not want either side to take any unnecessary steps that raise tensions in an already tense situation," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told AFP.

Russia's foreign ministry on Saturday called for "maximum restraint", saying it was "extremely concerned by the news that on both sides of the border there is a build-up of troops and military equipment".

China and Iran also called for calm.

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.

Before Zardari's speech, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee again called on Pakistan to do more to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and urged Pakistani leaders not to "unnecessarily try to create tension".

"Do not try to deflect the issue. A problem has to be tackled face to face. Evading a problem will not help to get rid of it," Mukherjee said in the eastern Indian town of Behrampur.

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

India and Pakistan came to the brink of a fourth war after an attack on the Indian parliament in late 2001 -- a strike New Delhi also blamed on LeT.

Both sides deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to the common border but they eventually pulled back following intense international mediation.

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