KARACHI, PAKISTAN — Ratcheting up tensions already heightened by last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Pakistan on Friday redeployed thousands of troops toward its border with India and canceled soldiers' furloughs, according to security and intelligence officials here.
The Pakistani moves reflected increasing wariness on the part of the nuclear-armed rivals after the rampage by gunmen through India's commercial and entertainment hub. Indian authorities have blamed Pakistani-based militants for the carefully orchestrated attacks in which more than 170 people were killed.
In the intervening weeks, India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars in the last six decades, have veered between conciliatory gestures and stridently nationalistic statements. Both governments insist that they do not want armed conflict but both have said they will defend their interests.
Pakistan's shifting of troops toward the Indian border and away from the Afghan frontier is likely to come as a blow to the Bush administration, which has praised Pakistan's military offensive against insurgents long based in its largely lawless tribal areas. The zone abutting the Afghan frontier is a stronghold for Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.
Senior diplomats, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveled to the region shortly after the Mumbai attacks, urging Pakistan to cooperate fully in India's investigation and crack down on militant groups implicated by Indian officials in the attacks.
The Bush administration Friday reiterated calls for calm. "We hope that both sides will avoid taking steps that will unnecessarily raise tensions during these already tense times," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, according to news agency reports. "We continue to be in close contact with both countries to urge closer cooperation in investigating the Mumbai attacks and in fighting terrorism generally."
Pakistan's government has taken some steps against the accused groups -- the banned militant organization Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliated charity, Jamaat ud-Dawa -- including arrests and raids on their facilities. But it says India has lagged in providing evidence about the attackers.
U.S. military officials in Afghanistan had no immediate comment on the Pakistani troop movements, but senior American commanders in Afghanistan have consistently said that a major Pakistani offensive in the tribal areas near the Afghan border, launched in August, has helped damp insurgents' ability to strike at Western troops inside Afghanistan.
