ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan told India today it did not want war and was committed to fighting terrorism — a move apparently aimed at reducing tensions after Pakistan moved troops toward their shared border.

Intelligence officials said Friday that the army was redeploying thousands of troops from the country's fight against militants along the Afghan border to the Indian frontier — an alarming scenario for the West as it tries to get Pakistan to neutralize the al-Qaida threat.

Islamabad also announced it was canceling all military leave — the latest turn of the screw in the rising tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors following last month's terror attack on the Indian financial capital of Mumbai.

India has blamed Pakistani militants for the terrifying three-day siege. Pakistan's recently elected civilian government has demanded that India back up the claim with better evidence but has also said it is committed to fighting the "cancer" of terrorism.

"We ourselves have accepted that we have a cancer," said Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in a televised speech today. "They are forcing their agenda on us."

Zardari has pledged to battle militancy, repeatedly reminding critics that his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was herself killed in a gun-and-suicide bomb attack blamed on terrorists.

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis visited her grave today to mark the first anniversary of her assassination.