The head of an eastern Indian state government said yesterday that Pakistani spies were stirring trouble among separatists and crime gangs in the area from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Last month, gunmen attacked the US cultural office in the West Bengal capital, Calcutta, killing four policemen in an attack India said was carried out by a crime gang and a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group.

"Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is sponsoring the armed groups in the area from Bangladesh to continue with their violent activities in the northeast and West Bengal," West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya told reporters.

Bangladesh has rejected previous Indian media reports that Pakistani agents were using its territory to foment trouble in India.

More than 50 guerilla groups are fighting Indian forces in the troubled northeastern states, sur-rounded by Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China and home to more than 200 ethnic and tribal groups.

Local people accuse the national government of plundering the region's wealth and giving little in return.

India and Pakistan are locked in a tense military stand-off, fuelling fears of war, over New Delhi's charge that Islamabad sponsors "cross-border terrorism" by training and arming rebels fighting Indian rule in the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Both sides have massed about a million men along their border, but New Delhi says it will not pull back until Islamabad proves it has ended support for the militants, closed down their groups and surrenders 20 alleged criminals and terrorists.

The issue came to a head after a December 13 attack on India's parliament New Delhi blamed on two Pakistan-based groups -including the one it says was involved in the Calcutta raid.