NEW DELHI India said on Monday it was planning a routine military exercise near the border with arch-foe Pakistan next month. This is a routine training exercise, there is nothing unusual about it, an Indian Defence Ministry spokesman said. Britain's Electronic Telegraph said on Sunday that India planned a military exercise involving some 100,000 troops on the sensitive border with Pakistan. The report, quoting Western intelligence sources, said the planned war games were the biggest in over a decade and would be carried out in the Rajasthan desert and over the Arabian Sea by land, air and sea forces.

The defence spokesman declined to comment on the numbers in the Telegraph report. We don't give out the number of troops involved but it can't be called large-scale or unusual, he said, adding that such exercises were normally carried out at this time of the year. In 1987 the arch-rivals, first India and then Pakistan, carried out large-scale military manoeuvres close to their border raising the spectre of a fourth war.

India and Pakistan have gone to war three times since they won independence from Britain just over 50 years ago, twice over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir. An Indian defence department official said Pakistan had been informed of next month's exercises weeks in advance. (Reuter)