Opinion-makers, however, said that despite rising tensions there was still scope to avoid a conflict between the neighbours, who have put some one million troops on their border spanning the frozen heights of Siachen glacier to the searing Thar desert.

"And if all that fails, then war is inevitable in the next few days," warned C. Raja Mohan, strategic affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper and an influential analyst.

With Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in Kashmir warning of a "decisive battle" to crush cross-border Islamic militancy, officials and experts said the question to be answered is "whether the forces will open a single front or more."

A defence ministry official, who asked not to be named, said India could use its 138-ship navy to enforce a tactical blockade of Pakistan in the Arabian Sea, thus strangling its fuel supplies.

"Indian ships are already there and are backed by submarines and surely they are not out there for fishing," he said, as an Indian destroyer, a frigate and three corvettes began steaming towards the Arabian Sea from the Bay of Bengal.

The heavily-armed frigate and two of the corvettes are capable of launching missiles up to 250 kilometres (155 miles) -- putting the strategic Pakistani port of Karachi within easy range.

C. Uday Bhaskar, Deputy Director of the military-funded Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), said a naval blockade would be activated if conflict erupts.

"It will be standard operating procedure," he said.

Other analysts said the step would drain Islamabad's military of fuel, making it more difficult to redeploy troops from the Afghan border to Kashmir, where India could attack Islamic rebels camps.

New Delhi argues that Islamabad, which conducted tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998, arms and trains militants in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir to launch attacks in India's zone of the disputed Himalayan region, where separatist violence has claimed more than 35,000 lives since 1989.

Pakistan denies the charge but gives moral and diplomatic support to what it calls the Kashmiris' struggle for self-rule.

Uday Bhaskar, who is also a naval commander, said since a conventional war was undesirable, India could resort to strikes on militant camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir -- New Delhi's main "political objective".

"We can use artillery, missiles and aircraft against the camps but the point is that we would be then climbing the escalatory ladder which would lead to all-out war," he said.

Only if the United States exerted sufficient pressure on Pakistan not to retaliate could an escalation be prevented, he added.

"If the US pressure is intense on Pakistan then it may not up the ante and then India could deal at the lower level," Uday Bhaskar said, referring to India's ambition of sending special units into Pakistani Kashmir for surgical strikes on militant camps.

Defence ministry officials said the double-measure of limited strikes in Kashmir and the naval blockade would give India an edge over Pakistan in terms of manpower and hardware.

Pakistan, which has fought two of its three wars with India over Kashmir since 1947, has warned it was beginning to redeploy forces from the Afghan border. Pakistan also announced Thursday it was recalling troops from UN peacekeeping duties in Sierra Leone.

According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, India has 1,303,000 people in its armed forces, plus 535,000 reservists. Pakistan has about 612,000 troops and 513,000 reservists.

India is believed to have about 60 nuclear warheads compared with Pakistan's 25, according to Britain's Times.

The Indian Air Force has 1,200 aircraft, including 132 helicopters, most of them armed. Pakistan's Air Force has 410 planes and 34 unarmed helicopters.

No Pakistani warplane can carry nuclear weapons but highly-placed sources have told AFP that India has reconfigured an unspecified number of its deep-penetration Jaguar bombers to launch such weapons.

India has one aircraft carrier to Pakistan's none, 19 submarines and 25 other ships besides a flotilla of 93 missile-carrying boats, troops carriers and assault craft.

Both South Asian countries are heavily dependent on their long-range guided missiles, with India having the edge because it began its missile development programme in 1983 -- long before Pakistan.

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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