Musharraf bid to avert all-out war

Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf is to deliver a televised address to his nation today, aimed at averting the threat of a full-scale nuclear war with India.

The attempt to defuse the tensions building up between the two nations comes as General Musharraf is expected to bring in new curbs on Islamic extremists.

But as Pakistan embarked on a third day of carrying out highly controversial ballistic missile tests, the Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee warned bluntly: "There is a limit to our patience and tolerance.

"The efforts that are going on - we will see to what extent they bear fruit, whether ongoing terrorism is stopped or not."

Britain has suspended all arms exports to the country, in order to try to ease the crisis, as Foreign Secretary Jack Straw prepares to visit the disputed region of Kashmir later this week.

Mr Straw will meet General Musharraf in Islamabad during the trip, pushing home the view that restraint is needed from both countries, before he flies to Delhi and delivers the same message.

However, as tensions rise, and troops fire at one another across the line which divides the disputed mountainous territory of Kashmir, it appears unclear how far a diplomatic solution could be found. The two countries have massed close to a million men along their frontier since a December attack on India's parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants.

Firing was said to have eased this morning, however, as both India and Pakistan awaited the speech to be delivered late this evening by General Musharraf, officially said to be about the "current border situation".

President Bush yesterday expressed his "strong reservations" about the short-range missile testing which was being carried out by Pakistan. However, more launches of missile tests are due to go ahead today and tomorrow.

On Saturday, Pakistan tested a missle which can carry a nuclear warhead nearly twice the size of the Hiroshima bomb.

The build-up of arms and the weapons testing has happened following a series of extremist attacks in Kashmir over the last six months.

Mr Vajpayee has warned Islamabad that it must halt its support tor militants in the region or face the real prospect of war.

Mr Bush also re-iterated in his speech yesterrday that the pressure was on Pakistan's ruler to honour earlier pledges he had made to tackle extremism.

"It is very important for President Musharraf to do what he said he's going to do on terror." he said.