Pakistan is in dire need of thousands of both tents and helicopters as it searches through the mountains to feed and shelter its more than three million people left homeless by the October 8 earthquake.

Pakistan is "willing to accept helicopters from India if these were offered without pilots," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"Given the obvious sensitivities, we could not accept involvement of Indian military on our side for relief operations," it said.

Kashmir is controlled in parts by India and Pakistan. The rivals have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region since independence in 1947.

The earthquake struck amid a peace process between Islamabad and New Delhi, who have been holding reconciliation talks since January 2004 but have made little headway over Kashmir.

Pakistani Kashmir bore the brunt of the earthquake which killed at least 41,000 people in Pakistan and more than 1,300 on the Indian side.

Pakistan has accepted three relief consignments from India for quake victims amid a worldwide aid effort to reach survivors.

The Islamabad government also said it was turning to its neighbor in its quest for as many tents as possible.

"In order to meet the acute shortage of winterized tents, Pakistan's High Commissioner in New Delhi had been asked to arrange procurement of this item from India on an urgent basis," the Pakistani foreign ministry statement said.

Temperatures have already approached freezing at night in the upper reaches of the earthquake-hit region.

Pakistan's chief relief coordinator Major General Farooq Ahmad Khan said some 260,000 tents were needed to cope after the earthquake, which registered 7.6 on the Richter scale.

"Our requirement is huge and we thought if we procure tents from India we can get them quickly," foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told AFP.

Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the United Nations in Pakistan, said that the country needed thousands more tents to meet its needs and that the world may not have a great enough supply.

A growing number of political leaders on both sides of Kashmir have urged the two countries to open up their de facto border to help relief operations.

India agreed Saturday to a Pakistani request to use helicopters in a no-fly zone along the de facto Kashmir border, which until the peace process saw nearly daily shelling.

The Indian military said, however, that it was on a heightened state of alert due to the earthquake as Islamic rebels could take advantage of the chaos.

India accuses Pakistan of training, arming and funding an Islamic rebellion that has raged in its section of Kashmir since 1989 leaving more than 40,000 people dead.

Pakistan denies the charge but says it extends "moral, political and diplomatic support" to Kashmiris seeking to end Indian rule in the Muslim-majority territory.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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