A statement issued by the Foreign Office maintained that ``there is no increase in tension between India and Pakistan''.

It said that the stalled bilateral dialogue would resume after the Prime Ministers of the two countries meet in New York on September 23 and issue final instructions to their Foreign Secretaries.

Prime Minister's Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra also told a private television channel that India had not appreciated Annan's remarks and would decide on a detailed response to his statement.

The UN Secretary General had clubbed the Kashmir issue with the deadlocked peace process in Cyprus and described it as ``a major cause of concern''.He had also linked the dispute to the nuclear question and said that the tests conducted by India and Pakistan had ``called into question'' theindefinite extension of the NPT and the CTBT.

The Foreign Office pointed out that both these treaties highlight ``the flaws in the current international non-proliferation regime which legitimises the possession of nuclear arsenals with the five nuclear weapon states in perpetuity''.

In this context, the NAM declaration at Durban was welcome because it recognised that the Indo-Pak tests underline the need to work even harder to achieve global disarmament, the statement said.

The BJP also took strong exception to Annan's remarks. ``Kashmir should not have been mentioned nor equated with other issues as according to the Shimla Agreement, it is a bilateral issue,'' party spokesman K.L. Sharma told correspondents today.