ROME, Dec. 5—Pope Paul VI expressed fear today that the war between India and Pakistan could involve other countries.

The Pontiff spoke about the fighting to a crowd that had gathered in St. Peter's Square before giving his customary Sunday blessing from a window of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace.

There is a “frightful danger,” the Pope said, that alliances “almost automatically” may bring others into the conflict.

He explained that “patient and skillful efforts to link the states with the intent of insuring solidarity and peace may degenerate into coalitions of peoples and interests even more ferociously hostile to each other.”

The Pope said that there was still well‐founded hope that the war would not widen.