ISLAMABAD: Pakistan again said yesterday it did not want war with India, as the international community tried to defuse tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors after Islamabad moved troops to the border.

The United States and Russia led calls for calm in both Islamabad and New Delhi in a bid to improve ties that have deteriorated in the month since the Mumbai attacks, which India has blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

“We have lost our people — we do not talk about war, we do not talk about vengeance,” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in a speech on the first anniversary of the assassination of his wife, former Premier Benazir Bhutto.

“Dialogue is our biggest arsenal,” he told ministers and lawmakers in remarks broadcast live on state television, saying negotiations were “the solution to the problem of the region.”

But Zardari warned India not to push Islamabad too hard for action against extremist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which New Delhi says masterminded the attacks in Mumbai that left 172 people dead. “We have non-state actors. Yes, they are forcing an agenda on us,” he said.

But on the subject of future action against such movements, he said: “We shall do it because we need it, not because you want it.” “This mettle has been tested many times. Please do not test it again... Allow us the freedom of democracy, allow us the freedom of choice,” he said. “We will cure it, we will solve it, we will correct it.”

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said Pakistan will not act first in any face-off with India but is prepared to defend itself from aggression. Gilani said Pakistan did not want war but was ready for one. “Our friends are trying their best to persuade India so as to avoid aggression ... to avoid any sort of misadventure,” he told Muslim diplomats at a ceremony to mark the anniversary of Benazir’s murder.

“But at the same time, our armed forces are highly professional. They are fully prepared but at the same time I assure you, once again, that we will not act. We will only react,” Gilani said.

Relations between the South Asian neighbors hit a low point Friday when top Pakistani officials announced troops were moving east. They said the military had moved a “limited” number of troops from the tribal areas near Afghanistan, where they are fighting Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants, to the eastern border with India.

“We do not want to create any war hysteria but we have to take minimum security measures to ward off any threat,” a Defense Ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity. But the news set off alarm bells in New Delhi, where Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned his military chiefs for a strategy session and the Foreign Ministry advised citizens to avoid travel to Pakistan.

The reactions in both capitals unleashed a flurry of warnings and diplomatic activity, led by the United States. “We also do not want either side to take any unnecessary steps that raise tensions in an already tense situation,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told AFP.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry yesterday called for “maximum restraint,” saying it was “extremely concerned by the news that on both sides of the border there is a build-up of troops and military equipment.” China and Iran also called for calm. Both Islamabad and New Delhi have repeatedly said they do not want war and have called on the other to tone down the rhetoric, but warn they would act if provoked.

— With input from agencies