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Relations between India and Pakistan were on a knife edge today as Indian authorities combed through the wreckage of last week's attacks on Bombay and interrogated the one Pakistani militant captured.

A senior Pakistani security official has warned that Pakistan would pull back troops fighting Islamist militants on the Afghan frontier if India builds up its forces on Pakistan's border, as it did after an attack by Pakistani militants on India's parliament in 2001.

He said the next 48 hours would be crucial for the two nuclear-armed neighbours, which have fought three wars since winning independence from Britain in 1947, and almost went to a fourth after the Indian parliament attacks.

"If something happens on that front, the war on terror won't be our priority," the senior security officer told journalists at a briefing.

"We'll take out everything from the western border. We won't leave anything there."

His threat was clearly designed to encourage the United States and its allies to temper India's response to the attacks, which it has blamed on "elements" in Pakistan – most likely the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

U.S. President George W. Bush has pledged his support for India, now considered a U.S. ally, but Washington also has close ties to Pakistan, its key Muslim partner in the War on Terror.

Pakistani troops are currently engaged in their biggest operation so far against al Qaeda and Taleban militants near the border with Afghanistan, where U.S. intelligence believes Osama bin Laden is hiding.

India's coalition government, led by the Congress Party, is under enormous political pressure to respond to the Bombay attacks so that it does not appear soft on terrorism in the run-up to national elections due by May.

It is convening an all-party meeting today to discuss the attacks and answer criticism of its response – particularly why it took seven hours for counter-terrorist National Security Guard commandos to arrive in Bombay.

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