KARACHI, Pakistan — Ratcheting up tensions heightened by last month’s terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, 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 through India’s commercial and entertainment hub. Indian authorities have blamed Pakistan- based militants for the orchestrated attacks in which more than 170 people were killed.
In the intervening weeks, India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars in the past 60 years, have veered between conciliatory gestures and stridently nationalistic statements. Both governments insist 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 probably will 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 U.S. 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 the groups’ facilities. But it says India has lagged in providing evidence about the attackers.
U.S. military officials in Afghanistan had no comment on the Pakistani troop movements, but senior American commanders in Afghanistan consistently have said that a major Pakistani offensive in the tribal areas near the Afghan border, launched in August, has helped dampen insurgents’ ability to strike at Western troops inside Afghanistan.
A Pakistani Taliban spokesman, Maulvi Omar, welcomed news of the redeployment.
The scope and repercussions of the Pakistani troop redeployment were not clear. Pakistani news reports, citing security officials, said movements involved thousands of soldiers from the army’s 14th Division to two garrisons that lie close to the Indian frontier, in the towns of Kasur and Sialkot.
