Indian and Pakistani forces fired across their border overnight as campaigning for the first stage of Indian Kashmir's violence-racked election entered its last day on Saturday. Rain dampened campaigning and headed off more protests after police fired teargas and used batons on Friday to disperse anti-Indian demonstrators in Jammu and Kashmir state's main city, Srinagar.

They were protesting against the killing of two civilians by security forces on Thursday night. Shops remained closed and security tight on Saturday in the area of the shootings.

Twenty-six constituencies will go to the polls in Monday's first round of voting, which has been staggered over four days to October 8 for security in the Himalayan region that is at the centre of a military stand-off and near-war between India and Pakistan.

An extra 40,000 security personnel have joined 450,000 soldiers, police and paramilitary troops already in the state.

Islamic militants have vowed to derail the election, and more than 300 people have been killed since the polling was announced in early August, including a state minister and almost two dozen party workers.

Authorities could not guarantee there would be no attacks on Monday, state police chief Ashok Kumar Suri said, adding that militants had been offered 100,000 rupees (2,050) for each candidate killed.

"I cannot ensure a 100 percent incident-free election," he told reporters. "There is no denying the fact that infiltration (from across the border with Pakistan) has been going on and a large number of foreign terrorists are in the countryside.

"It is possible that they will make...some attempts (to disrupt the voting)."

Moderate separatists are boycotting the election, which Pakistan, which also claims Kashmir, has dismissed as a rigged farce.

The main anti-Indian alliance of almost two dozen parties and organisations, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, has urged Kashmiris to boycott the election and has called a statewide protest strike for Monday.

VITAL TO REGIONAL PEACE

Such strikes are often widely observed, as much out of a general fear of violence as support for the action.

India wants a big electoral turn-out to bolster its rule in the mainly Hindu nation's only Muslim-majority state.

New Delhi has also said the level of election violence will be a key indication of Pakistan's commitment to honouring its pledge to stop Islamic militants crossing the frontier.

But widespread fear of violence and anger at Indian rule is likely to lead to a lacklustre turnout that will boost neither India nor Pakistan.

Indian Prime Minster Atal Behari Vajpayee on Friday accused Pakistan of trying to sabotage the election.

"If the elections are a mere fraud, why are terrorists being trained and infiltrated into India at the command of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency of Pakistan to kill election candidates and to intimidate voters?"

Vajpayee asked in a tough speech to the U.N. General Assembly.

The Inter-Services Intelligence Agency is Pakistan's main national intelligence force.

In an equally hard-hitting speech before the Assembly on Thursday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf denounced the election as rigged and said it would not contribute to peace.

India and Pakistan have massed a million men along their frontier after a December raid on the Indian parliament, for which New Delhi blamed Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.

Musharraf again denied Indian accusations that Pakistan fed unrest in Kashmir or allowed guerrillas to infiltrate the frontier.

India accuses Islamabad of arming and training Islamic militants fighting its rule in Kashmir, which Pakistan denies.

Kashmir was the spark for two of the three wars between India and Pakistan since Britain partitioned its South Asian empire into India and Pakistan in 1947.

India controls just under half of Kashmir, Pakistan about a third and China the rest.

PHOTO CAPTION

Indian Border Security Force (BSF) troops frisk people on the street in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, September 14, 2002. More than 5.6 million people are eligible to cast ballots in elections to the legislative assembly in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir that begins on Monday and stretches into next month. REUTERS/Pawel Ko