Nuclear enemies India and Pakistan Wednesday defiantly conducted missile tests at the height of the US-led war in Iraq, amid rising tensions in South Asia over the weekend massacre of 24 Hindus in disputed Kashmir.

India fired its surface-to-surface Prithvi missile, which can carry a one-tonne nuclear warhead a distance of 150 kilometres (93 miles), at 11:30 am (0600 GMT) from a range in eastern Orissa state.

Pakistan, too, fired a short-range missile but it was not known if the test followed or preceded the launch of India's 8.5-metre (28-foot) Prithvi, which has a minimum range of 40 kilometres (25 miles).

Indian military sources insisted the Pakistani missile launch was a tit-for-tat test-flight.

In Islamabad, however, the Pakistani government claimed its missile test had been conducted without prior knowledge of its rival's.

"We have conducted a successful Abdali missile test today and we had given prior information to all our neighbours about the test," government spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told AFP.

"The missile test by India came as a surprise. We were not notified about the test in accordance with the memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries on February 21, 1991," he said.

The Abdali surface-to-surface missile has a range of up to 200 kilometers (125 miles) and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, an official source said.

Military experts and political analysts in India said the timing of the Prithvi launch was calibrated to send a message to the United States, currently waging an all-out war in Iraq, as well as a separate warning to Pakistan.

"We visualise the test as a signal to Pakistan that the massacre of 24 Hindus in Kashmir has led to a fair amount of anger all over India and that such things are no more acceptable," said N.K.Sareen, a former chief of the Indian air force.

Sareen said the test of Prithvi, a tactical missile that has built-in computers and advanced navigation and guidance systems, appeared to be deliberately timed to coincide with the height of the conflict in Iraq.

"To the Americans the test gives two messages: 'You are sitting there in Pakistan but you have not squeezed (President Pervez) Musharraf's neck enough, which is not acceptable to us'," the air force chief said.

"Thousands of terrorist camps are still operating in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Washington is following a different objective of killing Iraqi women and children -- and that without finding the smoking gun of weapons of mass destruction or chemical weapons," Sareen said.

India, which blamed Pakistan for the weekend massacre, also accuses it of arming and training militants in Indian Kashmir. It is also pressuring the US to force Islamabad to end its support of the campaign for an Islamic Kashmir, which has left 37,500 people dead since 1989.

Indian defence spokesman P. Bandhopadhaya was at pains to de-link Prithvi's flight, abandoned twice last December due to glitches, to regional frictions or to India's vehement opposition to the US war on Iraq.

"This was just a developmental trial and hence the test should not be linked to any situation or issue because it is an ongoing process," he insisted.

Prithvi has so far been tested 16 times since its first trial in 1988.

"But at the same time, the test wants to explain that India is unperturbed by the global developments and that it will hone its pre-emptive strike capabilities if a war is thrust upon us," added political analyst Anand Ojha.

India, which conducted a series of nuclear tests in 1998, reversed its no-first-use doctrine last year with a warning that even a chemical or biological weapon attack on the soil would provoke a nuclear retaliation.

Prithvi, which means Earth, can be tipped with incendiary and fragmentary munitions or can carry a sub-kiloton nuclear warhead for use on massed troops or armoured formations.

India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan since 1947 and remains a supporter of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime, is also developing a series of ballistic missiles - Sapa-AFP