NEW DELHI, India ? India is considering the withdrawal of some fighter aircraft and ground troops from its border with Pakistan, possibly within the next several weeks, if it sees further evidence that Pakistan is ending its support for Islamic militants in Kashmir, a senior government official said Thursday.

At the same time, the official said, there’s general recognition in the Indian government that although Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has pledged to cut off the flow of militants moving from Pakistan’s portion of the divided region into India’s, he doesn’t exercise total control over them. As a consequence, India will not automatically respond to a terrorist attack inside its borders by striking at targets in Pakistan, the official said.

“If we see Pakistan is making sincere attempts at implementing what it has committed, if that is happening, then if there is a violent incident in Jammu and Kashmir, we won’t have a knee-jerk reaction to that,” the official said. “Then we can say, ‘No, no, no, Pakistan is cooperating in turning off the taps.'”

The official said, however, that India would not relax its military posture in Kashmir itself, where hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers are deployed along the line that separates them from Pakistani forces, until after state elections there in the fall.

The official’s comments came a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urged Indian officials in meetings here to take further steps to reduce tensions with Pakistan following Musharraf’s pledge.

In Islamabad Thursday, Rumsfeld backed away from his statement here on Wednesday that he had seen “indications” of al-Qaida activity in Kashmir, stressing that the reports were secondhand and “speculative.”

Rumsfeld’s remarks, which echoed charges by Indian officials, had angered Pakistan, which describes the militants as homegrown Kashmiri separatists fighting Indian oppression in the Muslim-majority region.