India has begun a joint army and air force exercise in the Rajasthan desert west of Delhi, involving between sixty- and seventy-thousand soldiers and hundreds of tanks and aircraft.

Pakistan protested when India first notified it of the exercise.

But diplomats in Delhi say there's little fear that the manoeuvres will increase the tensions raised when the two countries carried out nuclear tests in May.

The main source of tension remains the dispute over Kashmir; the Indian defence minister, George Fernandes, said today that seventy-seven Indian soldiers had been killed in clashes with Pakistani troops this year on the disputed border.

He said Pakistani troops had made ten attempts to capture Indian border outposts, including some on the Siachen glacier more than seven-thousand metres above sea level, where each side maintains a brigade of three-thousand soldiers.