As British Prime Minister Tony Blair pleaded with both sides to pull back from a potentially disastrous conflict in the volatile region, a US official said preventive diplomacy on the issue was "intense as it has ever been."

Their efforts gathered pace after Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee warned it was time for a "decisive fight" and Pakistan vowed to meet any "misadvenventure" by New Delhi with "full force."

Adding to fears of a nuclear exchange, the United States is concerned that war between India and Pakistan would compromise its pursuit of al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and Pakistani border areas.

A senior US official said accelerating face-to-face and telephone diplomacy with Pakistan had focused on specific measures.

"Our efforts right now are to defuse the tensions, what we want to do right now is prevent a war," the official said.

Asked whether the United States had tabled detailed proposals to tackle the root of the Pakistan-India conflict, rather than recently raised tensions, the official replied: "one step at a time."

"We have got ideas on how they can de-escalate."

The official said that Washington's peace efforts were part of an expanding international drive to head off the threat of war in South Asia.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who heads to the region next week conferred by telephone on the crisis with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was headed to Europe on Air Force One with President George W. Bush, said State Department deputy spokesman Philip Reeker.

Blair meanwhile described the India-Pakistan crisis as "grave" and called for restraint.

"I do urge both countries ... to pause and reflect before taking action that could plunge not just their countries into conflict but the wider region, with implications for the whole of the world," Blair told parliament.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also stepped into the fray, warning "the situation is a tense one."

"There is no question but that the entire administration has been in touch with associates in Pakistan, and associates in India."

Senior US and Indian defense officials wrapped up two days of previously scheduled security talks at the Pentagon that had been aimed at improving military relations between Washington and New Delhi.

US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs Christina Rocca has just returned from the region, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is expected in India and Pakistan in early June.

Powell has had frequent telephone conversations with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh.

Reeker described increased shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir in recent days as a "worrisome."

India has accused Pakistan of doing too little to crack down on incursions by militant groups across the (LoC), and blames Pakistan for an attack in Kashmir which left 35 people dead in Jammu last week and the assassination on Tuesday of a moderate separatist leader.

The senior US official said that Washington was assessing the extent of Pakistan's effort to control cross border infiltrations by Islamic militants, independent of India's assessments.

"It is a mixed picture and it is a different snapshot on any given day," the official said, adding that the United States was engaged with Pakistan to cut down on incursions.

"We are trying to convince him on the cross border terrorism issue."

Britain on Monday decided to pull out more than 150 diplomatic staff and dependents out of Pakistan over a security threat.

Washington made a similar move earlier this year.

All rights reserved. � 2002 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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