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NEW DELHI, Dec 14 (Reuters) - India denied on Sunday its warplanes had violated Pakistani airspace.

"The Indian Air Force denies any such violation of airspace," Air Force spokesman, Wing Commander Mahesh Upasani told Reuters, describing Pakistani accusations as an attempt to divert "the attention of the people towards something which has not happened".

Pakistan said on Saturday that Indian warplanes had violated its airspace but said this was "inadvertent" and there was no cause for alarm about an escalation of tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

The report followed a rise in tensions after gunmen killed 179 people in India's financial capital Mumbai in an attack which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Islamist militants.

A Pakistan Air Force spokesman said there were two violations, one in the Kashmir area and another in the sector around the city of Lahore in Pakistan's Punjab province.

In response to India's denial on Sunday, the Pakistani Air Force said it stood by its statement.

"Our stance is the same. There's no change in it," spokesman Humayun Viqas said.

India has been extremely careful in recent years to prevent its warplanes from straying into Pakistan's airspace.

Pakistan shot down two Indian planes which it said had gone into its airspace during the 1999 Kargil conflict, fought on the Line of Control dividing disputed Kashmir.

India said the planes were in its airspace when they were shot down.

Following the Mumbai attacks, India, backed by the United States, has called on Pakistan to crack down on Pakistan-based militant groups. But the government in New Delhi has resisted domestic pressure to launch retaliatory strikes of its own.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars and went to the brink of a fourth in 2002 following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 that New Delhi blamed on militants based in Pakistan. (Reporting by Bappa Majumdar; Additional reporting by Kamran Haider; Writing by Simon Denyer; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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