WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage may visit India and Pakistan in the next several weeks partly to look at ways to revive dialogue between the long-time adversaries, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

"We are looking at the possibility of an Armitage trip to South Asia. Nothing's been pinned down," said one official, who said Armitage was likely to discuss issues including stopping Muslim militants from slipping into Indian-controlled Kashmir and ways to restore an Indian-Pakistani dialogue.

"We're working on setting dates sometime in the coming weeks," said a second U.S. official.

The two countries, which have fought two of their three wars since 1947 over Kashmir, last year built up forces on their border and came to the brink of war after suspected Muslim militants attacked the Indian parliament.

Tensions have since cooled, but Washington has called on Islamabad to keep its promises to reduce infiltration by activists across the Line of Control, the military demarcation dividing the Himalayan region, into Indian-controlled Kashmir.

"The issues between them remain the same: concern about the Line of Control; concern about the infiltration across the Line of Control; the need for Pakistan to implement fully its commitments; the need to look at steps that they can take to start getting toward a dialogue," said one official.

The official, who spoke on condition that he not be named, said the subjects that may come up were not particularly new issues but were ones to which the United States believed it needed to devote "regular attention."

He said he did not know whether Armitage might visit Sri Lanka, where peace talks between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels produced a formal cease-fire in February of 2002 and are seen as the best chance yet to end the separatist war that started in 1983 and has killed 64,000 people.

Separately, the State Department issued a statement saying it would allow the return to Pakistan of nonessential U.S. diplomats who were given permission to leave the country on a voluntary basis just before the start of the Iraq war.

The State Department gave no reason for the decision and said family members of U.S. diplomats, ordered to leave in March 2002 as tensions between India and Pakistan flared, were still not allowed to return. It advised U.S. citizens to postpone travel to the country and urged those there to consider leaving, citing possible attacks by "terrorists."

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US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage