Comments by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee Wednesday that "the time has come for a decisive fight" further fuelled fears of an all-out war with nuclear rival Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region.

In any long-lasting conflict, India would have the advantage of a stronger economy and a population of over one billion compared to Pakistan's of about 142 million. It would thus be able to mobilise more soldiers.

But if a conflict was of short duration, these assets would not necessarily enter into the equation, according to William Hopkinson, of the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA).

"The quality of some of the Pakistani troops is probably better on average than that of the Indians," he told AFP.

"If the worst happens and a war starts, the pressures from all sides to stop it soon would be obviously enormous, so India's theoretical long-term advantage might not come into play."

According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, India has 1,303,000 people in its armed forces, plus 535,000 reservists.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has about 612,000 troops and 513,000 reservists.

India is believed to have about 60 nuclear warheads compared with Pakistans 25, Britain's Times reported.

According to British government sources quoted by the paper Wednesday, the Pakistanis are considered better troops, and could beat off an initial Indian offensive.

But the Indians could then use their superiority in conventional forces to overwhelm the Pakistanis.

In one doomsday scenario which, according to The Times, has been considered by British ministers, Islamabad could then use its weapon of last resort: a nuclear device.

India would survive the strike and hit back with its own atomic weapons, according to the scenario.

The use of nuclear weapons in a war for the first time since the Americans dropped such bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, is a threat that experts are not dismissing.

"Yes, it is possible," said Hopkinson. "There could certainly be a risk if one side is going down in conventional struggle to use a nuclear weapon.

"Whether their doctrine would be to use it tactically or to make a strike at the enemy's capital, I don't know.

"I would have thought that the likelihood would be a tactical use but again, it depends where the forces are... you don't want to use something (like that) on your own territory unless you can't avoid it."

Hopkinson added: "If Pakistan is faced with defeat but the defeat were happening on its own territory or its part of Kashmir, it might well strike for something a bit further back ... it could be forces massed behind the first echelon."

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