India’s Leader Warns of an Attack by Pakistan : War fears: Trouble in Kashmir and terrorism have raised tensions. Internal political unrest in both nations could push them toward conflict.

The rhetoric of war between India and Pakistan continued to escalate Saturday as a weekend wave of terrorism left dozens dead in India, and analysts began speculating that internal political unrest in both countries could push them into their fourth major war in three decades.

Speaking to reporters, Indian Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh said Saturday that Pakistan is preparing to launch an attack across India’s western border, where he asserted that Pakistan has deployed new armored regiments and sophisticated radar.

Singh added that Pakistan’s army and air force were on “red alert” along the cease-fire line that divides the Himalayan region of Kashmir, where a crackdown by India on an Islamic secessionist movement has heightened tensions between the two nations.

Kashmiri militants, who accuse Hindu-dominated India of reneging on agreements giving the region broad autonomy, attacked an Indian police convoy with grenades Saturday, killing a paramilitary officer. On Friday, five Kashmiri protesters were killed by security forces. The conflict has taken more than 325 lives since the first of the year.

Last week, Muslim militants, who call themselves moujahedeen , or Islamic holy warriors, killed three hostages, among them a Hindu businessman and the two top officials of the government university in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital.

Unidentified terrorists have struck elsewhere in India, as well, blowing up commuter buses and trains and strategic bridges in the past two days.

At least six passengers were killed late Friday when a bomb ripped through a bus in New Delhi. Two dozen died in the insurgency-torn state of Assam when militants blew up the only rail and road links to India’s northeastern territories. And, in the financial center of Bombay, scores more were seriously injured when a bomb exploded on a suburban commuter train.

Singh insisted Saturday that the attacks are part of a coordinated terrorist plan to destabilize India, possibly in preparation for an attack by Pakistan.

Singh’s comments were the latest in a series of official outcries that began Tuesday, when the Indian prime minister startled even this nation by calling on its 850 million citizens to prepare “psychologically” for war.

Responding to an earlier declaration by Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto that her nation “is prepared for 1,000 years of war with Hindu India,” Singh returned the implied threat in a speech to Parliament.

“I warn them (that) those who talk about 1,000 years of war should examine whether they will last 1,000 hours of war,” Singh said.

But he added that he does not believe that Pakistan, smaller and less powerful than India, actually wants all-out war.

“In my perception, Pakistan’s strategy is to avoid armed conflict, yet continue to fan insurgency within India,” he said. “Their strategy is to achieve the territorial goals without the price of war.”

Yet in subsequent public statements, Singh asserted that Pakistan appears to be preparing for war. Its air force, he said, has reactivated border air bases and moved artillery to forward positions along the frontiers of Kashmir and the adjacent state of Punjab, where India faces another secessionist movement from the Sikh religious minority.

Both Indian and Western military analysts in New Delhi confirmed that there has been a strategic buildup on both sides of the border but that the military movements do not appear to be a preamble to war.

“I just don’t see the possibility of an all-out war,” said Bharat Wariavwalla, a senior Indian strategic analyst. “The risks are too high for both sides, and certainly for Pakistan.

“I don’t care who runs Pakistan--whether it’s Benazir or the military--the force equation is so much in favor of India. And for India, no one in the military wants war. Looking simply at logistics, there are anti-government insurgencies in both of India’s key, front-line states, and the army couldn’t count on domestic support within their own staging grounds.”

Still, even skeptics say that in the present atmosphere of heightened rhetoric and tension, a small spark could ignite a crisis that would make rational military calculations invalid.

“All of the Indian military professionals say they are dead-set against war,” one Western military analyst in New Delhi. “But they add that, if there is a war, it will be because of the politicians and their domestic compulsions.”

In Pakistan, Bhutto’s 16-month-old civilian government is convulsed by dissent. In Karachi, the financial capital, sectarian violence forced the Pakistani army last week to send tanks into the streets to restore order.

The Indian crackdown in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, whose pro-Indian leaders chose to join India when the British-ruled subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, also has spawned angry protests throughout overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan, particularly in the Pakistani-controlled region that Islamabad calls Free Kashmir.

BACKGROUND Kashmir has soured India-Pakistan relations for years--and led to two wars between them. Officially called Jammu and Kashmir, the area is predominantly Muslim, a legacy of Muslim control centuries ago. The British installed a Hindu ruler when they pacified Kashmir in 1846. When the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 into predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, the Muslims in Kashmir rebelled. The region’s Hindu ruler placed Kashmir under India’s dominion. Indian troops fought the Kashmiri rebels and their Pakistani backers. The fighting ended with a U.N. cease-fire in 1949 and a division of Kashmir. The southern section was absorbed as India’s state of Jammu and Kashmir. The northern part remained under Pakistani control. Calls for a plebiscite on the people’s preferences were ignored by India. Serious fighting broke out again in 1965 and in 1971. Sporadic clashes between Indian and Pakistani troops along the cease-fire line, and charges by the Indian government that Pakistan is fomenting rebellion in the region, keep the Kashmir issue bubbling.