NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 18 October — India and Pakistan engaged in trading accusations yesterday just hours after US Secretary of State Colin Powell ended a visit meant to ease tensions in the region. Pakistan accused India of moving troops and said its forces were in a state of high alert to thwart any “attempt at mischief or misadventure” by its neighbor, prompting a forceful denial from New Delhi.

This heightened military situation between the two neighbors, who have been feuding over Kashmir for the last 50 years, may distract the United States and the international coalition fighting terror from the current military action against Afghanistan.

The two countries had greeted Powell’s arrival in the region on Monday with an outburst of border shooting in disputed Kashmir, the most serious firing there in nearly a year. Then only hours after he flew on to China after a visit to both Islamabad and New Delhi, they plunged into a war of words, apparently deaf to an appeal by Washington for calm while the US-led strikes against Afghanistan were under way.

In Islamabad, Maj.-Gen. Rashid Qureshi, spokesman for Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, told reporters that India had moved some troops and relocated some airforce hardware.

“We have information that India has moved forward some of its troops and air force assets which may pose a threat to Pakistan. The Pakistan armed forces are fully alive to the situation and on a high state of alert, ready to thwart any attempt at mischief or misadventure,” he said.

India’s rebuttal was swift.

“This is a complete fabrication. We would like to very forcefully refute such statements,” Ministry of External Affairs spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said. “Restraint needs to be exercised by the spokesman for the Pakistani side.”

An Indian Defense Ministry spokesman said military movement in Kashmir was “routine” and no extra troops had been deployed.

Asked why India had moved forward its troops and air force assets at a time when US Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Pakistan and India, the spokesman said, “We hope that sense will prevail. But the Pakistani armed forces are fully capable to respond to any aggressive move. We reserve the right to retaliate and defend ourselves.”

Powell earlier renewed an appeal to India and Pakistan to find a peaceful solution to their dispute over Kashmir, which both countries claim.

“The issue of Kashmir is one that has to be resolved between India and Pakistan. The United States is a friend of both. And to the extent that both nations can find our efforts to be helpful in some way or the other, we would like to be helpful,” he told a news conference in New Delhi.

Powell, walking a diplomatic tightrope to retain the support of both Pakistan and India in the US war on terrorism, also tried to smooth the feathers he ruffled in India with remarks he had made in Islamabad on Kashmir.

New Delhi is already anxious about Washington’s decision to adopt Pakistan as a key ally after long accusing its neighbor of sponsoring “cross-border terrorism” in Kashmir, a charge Islamabad denies.

So when Powell said in Islamabad on Tuesday that Kashmir was central to the Indian-Pakistani relationship, it hit a raw nerve. India says “cross-border terrorism”, not Kashmir, is central. “I didn’t say ‘a central’,” said Powell.

“If you look at it carefully I said central in the sense that it is an important issue, and to suggest that it isn’t wouldn’t be accurate.” But he said it was important to focus on other comments he made, in which he called for dialogue between the two countries.

He added that the United States condemned “terrorism” wherever it happened, whether in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States or in the suicide bomb attack on Indian Kashmir’s state assembly on Oct. 1 which killed 38 people. “The United States and India are united against terrorism, and that includes the terrorism that has been directed against India as well,” he said.

A Pakistan-based militant group first claimed and then denied responsibility for the Oct. 1 attack, incensing India which warned that its patience with Islamabad was wearing thin. Powell also announced that President George W. Bush had invited Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for talks in Washington on Nov. 9 after a UN General Assembly session.

Analysts were quick to see this as another attempt to assuage Indian concern over Washingtonís relationship with Pakistan.

ìTwo months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the prime minister of India is going to Washington. That sends a more important signal than the semantics of what the secretary of state said (on Kashmir),î said Amitabh Mattoo from New Delhiís Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, sharing the podium with Powell, also played down tension over diplomatic semantics on Kashmir.

ìWe could disagree, but we donít need necessarily to be disagreeable about the disagreement,î he said.

Powell, who also met Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Home Minister L. K. Advani, and opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, said the US and India stood ìshoulder-to-shoulderî in the fight against terrorism.

Vajpayee later told reporters that he had ìmade it clearî to Powell that Kashmir was not the ìcentralî issue in India-Pak relations. ìPowell was categorically told that we do not agree that Kashmir is a central issue... He has also made some amendment in his views,î Vajpayee said.