WASHINGTON - Deepening his personal involvement in the India-Pakistan conflict, President Bush telephoned the leaders of both countries yesterday and urged them to "choose the path of diplomacy" and to pull their nuclear-armed nations back from the brink of war.
The president placed back-to-back calls to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India on a day of relative calm. Still, more than 1 million troops combined from both sides remain massed along their border in Kashmir, a Himalayan region that both nations claim. And because the two feuding sides both possess nuclear weapons, the entire Asian subcontinent remains highly tense.
The State Department, meanwhile, ratcheted up its warning to Americans in the region, urging them to leave. About 60,000 Americans live or work in India, and a few thousand are in Pakistan.
"The risk of intensified military hostilities between India and Pakistan cannot be ruled out," the warning said.
Senior administration officials said Bush's growing involvement did not mean that tensions have significantly worsened. Yet his phone calls signaled a greater determination by the president to exert more pressure on the two sides.
Ari Fleischer, Bush's spokesman, stopped short of saying the president would serve as a "mediator." But he said Bush will stay "personally engaged."
Fleischer added: "Very often in crises like this, one of the reasons that things can escalate and get out of control or lead to war is that the two parties don't listen to each other. Very often what they look for is a third party to come in and make sure that messages are communicated back and forth."
An effort to mediate by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday failed. At a conference of regional leaders, Putin tried to set up a face-to-face meeting between Vajpayee and Musharraf but was rebuffed by the Indian leader. Musharraf and Vajpayee did not even shake hands, and each criticized provocations by the other side.
Bush called the two leaders a day before the first of two high-level American missions aimed at preventing an all-out war between the two countries. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is due to arrive in Pakistan today and to travel to India tomorrow. He will be followed over the weekend or early next week by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
A senior U.S. official said the two emissaries would present ideas to the two sides on ways to lower tensions but declined to disclose details.
According to Fleischer, Bush told Musharraf that the United States expected his nation to crack down on terrorism. India has accused Pakistan of training Islamic militants and of failing to halt their flow into India-controlled areas of Kashmir, where, Indian officials say, the guerrillas have attacked civilians.
India has demanded that Pakistan break up camps where it says militants are being trained.
Bush, his spokesman said, stressed to Vajpayee "the need for India to respond with de-escalatory steps." One such step, Fleischer said, would be for India to pull back some of its forces in Kashmir, where 700,000 Indian troops face 300,000 Pakistani troops amid almost daily exchanges of shelling and gunfire.
"To both leaders the president stressed the need to choose the path of diplomacy," Fleischer said.
In a report yesterday by a Pakistani government news agency that was carried by the Associated Press, Musharraf told Bush that a peaceful solution to the standoff remains possible and that Pakistan "would not initiate" war. The Indian Embassy in Washington said last night that it had no information about what Vajpayee told Bush.
In one sign of an easing of tensions, India said it would be willing to join Pakistan in joint patrols of the tense border area. Pakistan has dismissed this suggestion as unworkable.
Instead, Musharraf has called for international monitors to come to the region and examine whether Pakistan has fulfilled its pledge to close the border to Islamic guerrilla fighters. That idea has been rejected by India.
India has pledged not to be the first to resort to nuclear weapons in the conflict. Pakistan, though, refuses to make the same pledge. And it is thought to be more likely to use nuclear weapons because India enjoys an overwhelming edge in conventional forces.
Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 with the help of militant Islamic elements in the military and intelligence service who have encouraged and trained Kashmiri militants in the past. Some of the militants are thought to have ties to al-Qaida.
But since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Musharraf has tried to turn Pakistan away from Islamic militancy and to move in a pro-Western direction. The real problem in Kashmir, Pakistan says, is not terrorism, as India claims, but what it calls India's occupation of most of Kashmir and its human-rights violations.
A U.S. official said yesterday that one way of reducing tension would be for the two countries to restrain their rhetoric.
India has repeatedly warned that it would launch a retaliatory strike against cross-border terrorism. And Musharraf fueled fears Tuesday when he said that the possession of nuclear weapons implied that they might be used.
With tensions high, U.S. officials hope that the words of warning to the two countries, which are coming from a growing list of world leaders, will move them away from war.
Bush's stepped-up involvement comes as he is already wrestling with the war on terrorism and the intractable Middle East conflict, while laying the groundwork for action to topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq.