NEW DELHI, Dec 26: Urgent diplomatic moves were afoot on Wednesday involving key embassies in New Delhi and their worried governments back home to stall the spiralling nuclear rhetoric on both sides of the India-Pakistan border before it all begins to spin out of control, diplomats and analysts said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is due to visit New Delhi early next month, ostensibly on a wide-ranging bilateral visit, but clearly to lend his voice to global worries on the stand-off with Pakistan too. By then, diplomats said, the United States, Russia and China will have already been busy consulting, advising and even cajoling New Delhi and Islamabad to back down from the precipice.

“We could see some very important efforts out of Washington in the next couple of days or so,” an informed source in the diplomatic corps told Dawn. “We will see it happening soon. They are a worried lot out there.”

There were indeed worrying signals in New Delhi on Wednesday where the government declared that “owing to the large-scale deployment of troops and armour along the borders following Pakistani military build-up,” India’s Army Day January 15 parade was being called off.

The cancellation of the parade, when the might of the Indian Army is put on display at the military cantonment in Delhi, follows deployment of Army formations along the borders, a defence ministry official said. The government clarified however that the Republic Day parade, also involving military units, would be held on January 26 as usual.

Despite the mounting tension, there were a few straws in the wind to suggest a little more reassuring picture. For example the news that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee would certainly attend the SAARC summit in Kathmandu from January 4 was important, particularly the fact that it was announced by External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh after a 75-minute meeting of the Cabinet.

Some diplomats cited reports about both sides moving their missile units close to strategic locations as a worrying development, the first such, they said, since 1987 and 1990 when the United States had intervened to effectively thwart a potential nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan.

Most western embassies have cancelled their Christmas and New Year holiday plans to keep key personnel in the Indian capital as the war rhetoric looks more palpable with every fresh statement from New Delhi and Islamabad. And the rhetoric came from no insignificant quarters either. President Pervez Musharraf’s tough words were joined on Tuesday by the head of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party who said if Pakistan “uses nuclear weapons against us, Pakistan will be wiped off from the face of the earth.”

Amid the gloom, newspaper surveys however showed that most Indians did not yet believe the rhetoric would lead to war. One online newspaper had 63 percent against 36 saying they did not believe a war was nigh.

From Moscow President Vladimir Putin spoke to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee shortly before the Christmas holidays and although details of their talks were not available Russia is believed to be seriously concerned about the military build-up on both sides.

The Press Trust of India in a dispatch from Beijing quoted a senior official at the Asia Desk of the Chinese foreign ministry as urging India and Pakistan to exercise restraint. “We have paid attention to concerned reports. We appeal to the concerned sides to exercise restraint and maintain calm, from the point of view of protecting the overall peace and stability in South Asia,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said. “We also urge the concerned sides to hold peaceful talks and dialogue for solving the disputes,” she said.

The remarks prompted a withering Indian response. “China’s call for restraint should be directed at Pakistan. It is for Pakistan to take action against the terrorist outfits operating from that country.”

There have been similar views expressed in senior political quarters about American calls for calm too, with people including Defence Minister George Fernandes hardly concealing their anger at the alleged double standards they say Washington has in the global fight against terrorism.

The report from the apex Cabinet Committee on Security, which met at Vajpayee’s residence, was an assortment of the grim laced with some assuring words too. A CCS review was rescheduled for Thursday as Fernandes, touring the Himalayan frontline regions, was stranded there due to bad weather.

“India has taken all measures required to protect its borders with Pakistan and would continue to be alert to the situation,” External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, told reporters after the CCS chaired by Vajpayee.

On Pakistan’s claim of freezing assets of Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammad, Singh said: “I must make it clear that a kind of trickery, that is simply changing names, shifting headquarters from one part of Pakistan to another or to indulge in cosmetic seizure of assets is really to make a mockery of the gravity of the situation and the enormity of the issues that we confront.”

Asked whether India would use other options to pressurize Pakistan, the minister merely said, “all issues were considered and will be re-examined in totality tomorrow when the CCS meets again.”

Singh said Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Vijay Nambiar would participate in Thursday’s CCS meeting. He said: “The High Commissioner will be called to the CCS and required to share whatever he discussed before departing from Islamabad yesterday”.

In an interview to Aaj Tak news channel, Defence Minister George Fernandes said diplomatic efforts are on to put pressure on Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to stop supporting terrorism across the border.

The minister added that both United States and United Kingdom have advised Pakistan on the issue, however, New Delhi is unsure whether their efforts will yield positive results.

Fernandes was also quoted by PTI as saying that India’s missile systems are “in position” and that the Indian Army’s training exercises will be held as scheduled in Rajasthan and Punjab in the first half of January.

Asked if there was a possibility of a change in the schedule for exercises in view of the Pakistani military build-up, Fernandes said “there has been no talk of change of schedule. They will be routine exercises”.

Some opposition parties, led by the Left front, have accused the government of whipping up a war hysteria against Pakistan to benefit from a nationalist upsurge in key state elections. The Election Commission on Wednesday announced that the next round of Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttaranchal and Manipur would be held between Feb 13 and 21 next year. Also, by-elections for six Lok Sabha and six Assembly seats in various states will be held simultaneously on February 21.

Meanwhile, villagers in several border areas of Samba sector have moved to safer places due to continued firing by Pakistani troops from across the International Border in Jammu division, official sources were quoted by the PTI as saying on Wednesday.

Due to “heavy exchange of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops, people from many forward villages of Samba sector have been moving to the interiors since last four days,” the sources said, adding some of them were taking shelter in government buildings or with their relatives in adjoining villages.