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Pakistan will not hand India any of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militants arrested on Sunday for their suspected role in the Mumbai terrorist attacks, but will try them under its own laws, the country's foreign minister said today.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi also said that Pakistan did not want war with India, but was ready to defend itself in case of another conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours, which have fought three wars since independence in 1947.

He was speaking a day after Pakistani officials revealed that security forces had arrested the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks and at least seven other suspects in a raid on an LeT training camp in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir on Sunday.

India has demanded that Pakistan extradite 20 terror suspects, believed to include the alleged mastermind, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, who is LeT's operations chief, and Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, LeT's founder.

Mr Qureshi, however, made it clear today that Pakistan had no intention of complying with that demand.

"The arrests are being made for our own investigations. Even if allegations are proved against any suspect, he will not be handed over to India," he said. "We will proceed against those arrested under Pakistani laws."

There was no immediate official response from India, but Indian officials and analysts have said they did not expect Pakistan's weak civilian government to extradite the suspects for fear of provoking a domestic political backlash.

Sunday's raid was the first action taken by Pakistan's government in response to pressure from India and the United States to crack down on LeT, which has close links to Pakistan's intelligence service, following the Mumbai attacks.

"This is an intelligence-led operation against banned militant outfits and organisations," the military said in a statement last night. "There have been arrests and investigations are on."

Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's President, said the raid showed that Pakistan was committed to taking "action against the non-state actors found within our territory, treating them as criminals, terrorists and murderers".

"To foil the designs of the terrorists, the two great nations of Pakistan and India ... must continue to move forward with the peace process," he wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times.

The United States welcomed the arrests as a positive step. "What's critically important now is that we continue to work together - the Indians, the Pakistanis, the United States, and our allies - to prevent follow-on attacks after the attacks in Mumbai," said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman.

The United States sees Pakistan as a key Muslim ally in the War on Terror and fears a repeat of the crisis that unfolded after LeT militants attacked India's parliament in 2001, prompting India and Pakistan to mass troops on their common border.

Pakistan has warned the United States that if India reacts the same way this time, it would pull back Pakistani forces fighting Taleban and al Qaeda militants near the Afghan border, potentially jeopardising U.S. and Nato operations in Afghanistan.

"We do not want to impose war, but we are fully prepared in case war is imposed on us," Mr Qureshi said today. "We are not oblivious to our responsibilities to defend our homeland. But it is our desire that there should be no war."

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