NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 11 June — India said yesterday that it would reopen its airspace to Pakistani flights to third countries in a gesture acknowledging that Pakistan was acting to stop militants from infiltrating its territory. Pakistan welcomed the Indian move but said a lot more needed to be done to ease tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Indian Foreign Ministry announced the move in response to a pledge from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on militants whose attacks over the disputed territory of Kashmir have brought the nuclear rivals to the brink of war.

Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said further Indian steps to ease tensions would follow when India saw more evidence that the infiltrations had come to a permanent halt. “This is a sequenced reaction,” she said.

“There are some indications of a diminution of infiltration, so we felt this response was warranted,” Rao told a press conference.

Pakistan’s Information Secretary Anwar Mahmood said Islamabad would “certainly consider” lifting its own ban on Indian overflights, which was only imposed in response to India’s ban.

In London, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said India would name an envoy to Pakistan and recall some naval forces to port in an attempt to ease cross-border tension between the two countries.

Straw said India’s Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh told him about the diplomatic initiative in a phone call yesterday.

“He told me that India was announcing today that restrictions on overflights from Pakistan over India were to be lifted, and that the name of the next Indian high commissioner (ambassador) to Pakistan was being made public,” Straw said yesterday.

“I also understand that the western and eastern Indian fleets are returning to port,” he told Parliament.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told Reuters his government would make a detailed response today. “This is a step in the desired direction, but a lot more needs to be done,” he said.

About the Indian proposal for joint patrolling of the Line of Control (LoC) in disputed Kashmir, Khan said Islamabad had not received a formal proposal from India. He said Islamabad wanted India to make the proposal formally.

But Gen. Musharraf yesterday warned the chance of war with India remained high as long as the two countries’ armies stood ready for action on their common borders.

Musharraf said there would be no meaningful lowering of tensions until India pulled its troops back. “As long as the forces remain deployed and as long as there is a capability, capability of their forces on the borders to change their opinion and change their intention and take action at a short notice, the danger is not over,” Musharraf said according to the Associated Press of Pakistan, before boarding a flight to the United Arab Emirates.

In Abu Dhabi, President Musharraf held yesterday talks on efforts to defuse the Indo-Pakistan crisis.

The official WAM news agency said Musharraf briefed UAE President Sheikh Zayed ibn Sultan Al-Nahayan on efforts to contain the military standoff between Pakistan and India and “measures by his government to combat terrorism”.

The UAE president stressed “the need to defuse tension between the two countries through negotiations and understanding and to resolve differences and problems peacefully,” WAM said. Musharraf is scheduled to arrive in the Kingdom today as part of a his three-day trip to the Gulf.

Five people, four of them civilians, died in fresh artillery and mortar bomb exchanges between Indian and Pakistani troops across their frontier in disputed Kashmir, officials said yesterday.

Officials in Azad Kashmir said eleven people were injured as Indian troops continued their shelling of Pakistani Kashmir yesterday.

The injury list included 10 names from the Samahni sector of Bhimber, the southernmost district.

In Luxembourg, European Union foreign ministers urged Pakistan yesterday to keep its promise to restrain militants from crossing over to Indian Kashmir.

The 15 ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, also urged India to improve the human rights situation in the disputed province to prepare the ground for fair elections there.