India's prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has headed for the front lines in Kashmir as the killing of a separatist leader and fresh border clashes with Pakistan in the disputed state have fueled fears of war between the two neighbors.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, arrived in India's only Muslim-majority state on Tuesday and left the winter capital of Jammu for Srinagar, where a defence official said he would board a helicopter immediately to go to the front to address soldiers.
With the two nuclear-armed nations trading blame over Tuesday's killing of Abdul Gani Lone, a moderate in the Kashmiri separatist camp, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was due to meet his cabinet and top security officials in Islamabad.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, highlighting a threat of war between the South Asian rivals, said he would visit the region next week, and urged the international community to act to defuse the crisis.
"The possibility of war between India and Pakistan is real and very disturbing," Straw said in London. "This is a crisis the world cannot ignore."
Underscoring growing international concern, Indian and Pakistani forces traded sporadic fire in Kashmir overnight and one woman was wounded in machinegun and small-arms exchanges. There was also intermittent mortar firing in three areas along the cease-fire line dividing the Himalayan region, he said.
India, which holds 45 percent of Kashmir, considers it an integral part of its territory.
Pakistan, which controls a third of the area, demands implementation of a 1948 U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a plebiscite to determine the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
China holds the remainder of Kashmir, which has around 13 million people - some 77 percent of them Muslims.