WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI, 14 May — The United States is working to reduce tensions and avert war between nuclear powers India and Pakistan, a US Defense Department official said yesterday.

"There is a risk of war" that is "very large," said Douglas Feith, the Defense Department’s policy chief. "The governments of India and Pakistan have an enormous interest in bringing tensions down and the risks of war down."

The United States is "focused on defusing those tensions," he said at a US-India Defense Industry seminar.

India is due to issue a report soon on whether it believes Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has ended support for Kashmiri activists, even as the spring thaw makes it more likely that activists will enter the mountainous region contested by the two countries.

India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads since a Dec. 13 attack on Indian Parliament by suspected Pakistan-based activists. The two countries have banned over flights by their respective national airlines and India recalled its ambassador in the wake of the attack.

More than a million men have massed along the border, backed by warplanes, tanks and missile batteries. Millions of land mines have been planted, bringing agriculture to a halt in key areas.

US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca arrives in New Delhi today on a new round of shuttle diplomacy analysts say is a sign of Washington’s increasing concern over tensions between New Delhi and Pakistan. Rocca will try to defuse the border standoff.

Her third visit since March comes as Indian intelligence agencies prepare a report on activists slipping into Kashmir from Pakistan, the issue which has sparked a massive five-month military standoff between the South Asian nuclear neighbors.

Indian officials and New Delhi-based diplomats say despite Musharraf’s promises, there has been no drop-off in infiltrations by anti-India activists, raising the prospect of Delhi stepping up pressure on Islamabad.

"The reading in Washington is that the snows in Kashmir have melted but there appears to be no decline in the infiltration of terrorists from across the border, an ominous development that could force India’s hand," commentator Chidanand Rajghatta wrote in the Times of India daily yesterday.

US academic and former State Department official Dennis Kux said Indian military action is likely if there is no fall in the number of activists crossing into India.

"If, when the weather warms, India finds that Pakistan has not delivered what it promised, a fresh crisis is certain," he wrote in the latest issue of US-based Foreign Affairs magazine.

"Indian military strikes across the line of control will probably follow."

Rocca is due to meet senior Indian officials before heading to Pakistan tomorrow for talks with Musharraf.

"There has been little to suggest any real, any substantial change of attitude on the part of Pakistan," Indian External Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao told reporters.

"This is an opportunity for us to share (with Rocca) a very realistic and detailed assessment of how we perceive the situation..."

Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said Islamabad hoped Rocca’s latest visit would help defuse tensions.

"Obviously, when the military are eyeball to eyeball, a situation on the ground can turn to a dangerous kind of a development," he told reporters.

Last week Secretary of State Colin Powell called Musharraf and Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to discuss how the United States might help reduce tensions between the two countries.

Musharraf knows reining in the Kashmiri activists is in his interest and India’s, Feith said.

"He has enormous interest in ensuring that those attacks do not continue and do not risk war, do not risk undermining everything he is trying to accomplish for Pakistan," he said.

Musharraf, who has worked closely with the United States in the war on terrorism, is trying to remake Pakistan and point it in new directions, Feith said.

"Religious extremism and terrorism are a threat not only to India and the United States but also to President Musharraf and the success of his grand political project," he said. "We all have a stake in his success."

Feith welcomed the increasing cooperation between the United States and India on defense projects.