Islamabad: Pakistan on October 21 said that all of its troops would be pulled back from its internationally recognised border with arch-enemy India, but refused to specify numbers.

"Pakistan will withdraw all its troops to peacetime locations," military spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi said. He was unable to give a timetable for the withdrawals.

Pakistan announced the troop withdrawal on October 17 in response to India's decision a day earlier to demilitarise the international border, signalling the biggest step towards de-escalation in the tense 10-month military standoff between the nuclear neighbours.

Neither country however intends to reduce troops on the heavily militarised line of control (LoC) running through the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Both nuclear powers had built up around one million soldiers, mines and heavy equipment along their border and LoC after an attack allegedly by Kashmiri militants on Indian Parliament in December 2001.

India blamed the assault -- which left 14 people dead, including the five gunmen -- on Pakistan-based terrorists.

Pakistan rejected the claim and has always denied providing any more than moral and logistical support to Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in the Southern half of Kashmir it controls.

More than 37,000 people have died in Kashmir since an Islamic militancy broke out in 1989. Pakistan and militants put the death toll twice as high.

Border tensions rose to fever pitch in May, prompting emergency international shuttle diplomacy between New Delhi and Islamabad, credited with bringing them back from a war many feared would go nuclear.

"It is India that had massed troops on our borders," Qureshi said.

"We committed that for every one step India would take Pakistan would take two. (This withdrawal) is more than two in fact."