NEW DELHI -- Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said on Sunday the world had to realize there was a limit to India's patience when it came to attacks by militants who India accuses Pakistan of supporting. "The world community should understand that there is a limit to India's patience," Vajpayee said in a speech carried live on national television. "How can we tolerate terrorist activities in our country and for how long?" he asked.

The two neighbors have massed a million men on their border since a deadly raid on India's Parliament in December that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants, Reuters reported.

Vajpayee said India should have responded to the December attack on its Parliament immediately.

"The day the attack on Parliament took place they should have got a response from India," he said.

He did not elaborate.

Tension has surged in the wake of a bloody May 14 raid on a Indian army camp in Kashmir. The rivals have been trading heavy fire on the frontier for more than a week and 16 civilians on both sides were killed in weekend clashes, officials said.

Vajpayee said everyone in the country must make sacrifices. "We are ready to face the challenge.

We want victory. We want victory over terrorism and everybody's contribution is necessary." Meanwhile, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an extensive interview appearing in Sunday's ***Washington Post ***that relations between India and Pakistan have eroded to the point that a "serious" threat of war exists, AFP reported.

"My honest judgment is that the situation is certainly tense, and serious," Musharraf told the daily, adding that relations have become particularly volatile since troops from both sides began massing on the countries' shared border.

"The seriousness of the situation now is that the capability exists for any adventurous act," he said, adding that the standoff has the potential to become "extremely explosive." Musharraf's comments were posted on the ***Washington Post'***s website Saturday, the same day Islamabad test-fired the first of two nuclear-capable missiles that could strike deep into India, in the latest salvo between the two regional powers.

On Sunday, Pakistan successfully fired a second surface-to-surface missile, according to an official statement from Islamabad.

In the newspaper interview, the Pakistani president called for an enhanced presence of United Nations monitors in the region.