HIGHLIGHTS: 6 People Killed in Cross-border Shelling||Rumsfeld Plays Down Significance of Comments on Qaeda Link|| STORY: U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ended a visit to India and Pakistan on Thursday saying he saw progress in reducing tensions and averting a catastrophic war between the nuclear-armed rivals. (Read photo caption)

But Pakistan warned it saw no real reduction in the threat it feels from Indian troops massed on the border with its much larger neighbor.

"I think progress is indeed being made," Rumsfeld told a news conference after meeting Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, while warning "the facts on the ground in large measure still remain in a state of a reasonably high alert."

Pakistan sounded an even more cautious note. Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said Musharraf had welcomed India's steps to defuse the crisis, "however marginal."

"But there is no change whatsoever in the capability of the Indian forces massed on our borders and the Line of Control," he told a joint news conference with Rumsfeld. "Therefore, there is no real reduction in the threat."

CROSS-BORDER SHELLING CONTINUES

Heavy firing erupted on the border overnight, killing at least six people according to officials on both sides. But a more hopeful sign emerged as India acknowledged infiltration by Muslim militants into Indian-held Kashmir had fallen.

India and Pakistan have exchanged almost daily firing across the line of control dividing their armies in Kashmir.

India reported on Thursday two officers and a civilian had been killed by Pakistani mortar and heavy machinegun fire, while Pakistan said two women and a 10-year-old boy had been killed on its side of the line of control by Indian mortar fire.

RUMSFELD PLAYS DOWN SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMENTS HE MADE IN INDIA ON QAEDA LINK

Rumsfeld meanwhile appeared to play down comments he made in New Delhi that members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network might be operating in Kashmir, saying he was confident Pakistan would deal with them if any were found there.

Pakistan has already dismissed the allegation as Indian propaganda.

"The facts are I do not have evidence and the United States does not have evidence of al Qaeda in Kashmir," he said.

"We do have a good deal of scraps of intelligence that come in from people who say they believe al Qaeda are in Kashmir, or are in various locations," he said. "It tends to be speculative, it is not actionable, and it is not verifiable."

"The cooperation between the United States and Pakistan is so close, and so intimate and so cooperative on the subject of al Qaeda, that if there happened to be any actionable intelligence as to al Qaeda anywhere in the country, there isn't a doubt in my mind Pakistan would go find them and deal with them."

BACKGROUND TO CONFLICT

The dispute over the Himalayan region is a legacy of the hurried partition by departing British colonial rulers of the Indian subcontinent into Islamic Pakistan and secular but mostly Hindu India at independence in 1947.

Kashmir's Hindu ruler controversially acceded to India after partition but India's then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru promised the Kashmiri people a plebiscite to decide on their future status, a pledge backed by subsequent U.N. resolutions.
After elections in the region in 1987 widely seen as rigged, Muslim militants began a violent separatist revolt, which has provoked an equally violent response by Indian security forces, who have been accused of massive human rights abuses.

But Pakistan's support for the rebellion has backfired, and the involvement of Islamic radicals from Pakistan and abroad has been a massive public relations disaster, especially after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

PHOTO CAPTION

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talks to reporters as Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar listens during a joint news conference in Islamabad June 13, 2002. Rumsfeld ended a visit to India and Pakistan saying he saw progress in reducing tensions and averting a catastrophic war between the nuclear-armed rivals. But Pakistan warned it saw no real reduction in the threat it feels from Indian troops massed on the border with its much larger neighbor. (BK Bangkash-Pool/Reuters)