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GUWAHATI, India, Feb 13 (AFP) - India said Thursday it was putting diplomatic pressure on Bangladesh to dismantle alleged militant camps on its soil and was installing high-tech sensors on the border to monitor illegal immigration from that country.

"Our government cannot take any direct action if insurgent groups operate from any foreign country, but we are exerting diplomatic pressure on Bangladesh," the Press Trust of India quoted junior Home Minister I.D. Swamy as saying in the northeastern state of Nagaland.

Swamy argued that the militants in Bangladesh were being helped by Pakistan's Inter-Services-Intelligence (ISI) military secret service.

"The rebels are aided by the ISI and the epicentre of the insurgency is in Pakistan," he said, adding that rebel groups were also operating from tiny Bhutan, which adjoins India's northern state of Assam.

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Morshed Khan, who was Thursday on his way to India in a bid to defuse a border row with its giant neighbour, has denied the presence of militant camps or ISI operatives in Bangladesh.

He said claims to this effect, also made at the weekend by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, were "unwarranted" and "intended for 'domestic compulsions'".

Swamy later told reporters that high-tech surveillance sensors had been given to the Border Security Force (BSF) to stem border-crossing.

"Among the various steps to check infiltration from Bangladesh, we have provided sensors and other devices to the BSF," Swamy said in Dimapur, the commercial hub of the northeastern state of Nagaland.

"The gadgets given to the BSF have already made a huge difference to the confidence and performance of the troopers," Swamy told reporters after a poll campaign for his ruling BJP party for upcoming state elections.

India shares a 4,095-kilometre (2,539 mile) border with Bangladesh, vast stretches of which remain porous.

Swamy's comments come a week after a flare-up in relations between the two nations over the fate of a group of snake charmers stranded in no-man's land after India refused to allow them entry, claiming they were illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

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