Bush, Putin Chide Pakistan's Leader

In a display of tag-team diplomacy, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly urged Pakistan's president Saturday to ease tensions with neighboring India. Putin decried Pakistani missile tests and invited the South Asian adversaries to talks.

The leaders scrambled to avoid a potential war between the nuclear-armed countries, discussing the issue Friday during Mr. Bush's overnight stay at Putin's residence outside Moscow.

Pakistan conducted the first in a series of missile tests Saturday. The medium-range Ghauri missile, fired at 9:30 a.m. at an undisclosed site, flew 900 miles - far enough to reach deep into India. It can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads.

Touring the Hermitage Museum together, Putin told reporters that the tests "really aggravated the situation and I am concerned about that." Mr. Bush did not mention the tests, but Secretary of State Colin Powell later said the administration was disappointed by Pakistan's actions.

Yet, in a statement CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker likens to lighting the fuse of a bomb, Pakistani president Pervez Mush said after one of the tests, "We don't want war, but we are ready for war."

The tests were scheduled to continue through Monday.

"I don't think it was a particularly useful thing to do right now, even though I don't think it causes us to get any closer to conflict," Powell said while traveling with the president.

Mr. Bush urged Musharraf to keep his promise to crack down on Islamic militants staging cross-border attacks in Kashmir.

"We are deeply concerned about the rhetoric," Mr. Bush said. "It's very important for President Musharraf to do what he said he was going to do in his speech and that is to stop the incursions across the border. It's important that India know that he is going to fulfill the promise."

Indian police on Saturday killed three armed militants India claims crossed the border from Pakistan, reports correspondent Whitaker. Two Indian police also were killed, he says.

India and Pakistan have massed more than a million men along their border, raising fears of their fourth war since independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

In January, Musharraf delivered a nationally televised speech in which he promised he would crack down on terrorism. Days later, he banned five Islamic militant groups - two of them accused by India of a deadly December attack on the Indian parliament. Those groups had long worked in tandem with Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence organizations.

Powell said Musharraf has not yet lived up to his January promises. "We don't believe that action is yet complete," he said.

Meanwhile four Pakistani civilians were killed by Indian fire in disputed Kashmir as Pakistani and Indian forces were involved in heavy exchanges on their frontier in the Himalayan region, Pakistani officials and media said on Saturday.

An Indian official said the exchanges of fire were some of the heaviest since tensions surged between the hostile neighbors in the wake of the bloody May 14 raid on an Indian army camp in Kashmir

Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, also traveling with Mr. Bush, have telephoned their counterparts in both countries in an effort to defuse tensions.

"We are making it very clear to both parties that there is no benefit to a war, there is no benefit to a clash that could eventually lead to a broader war," Mr. Bush said.

Putin invited Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to a one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of a summit of the Council on Cooperation and Confidence Measures in Asia to be held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on June 3-5. Members of the council include India, Pakistan, China, Afghanistan and several ex-Soviet states.

"I hope that they come, so that here we can discuss together how to prevent the conflict from further development," Putin said.

The Indian Foreign Ministry confirmed that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee would be attending the Almaty summit and would hold talks with Putin. But ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said there was nothing yet to suggest that Vajpayee and Musharraf would meet one on one.

Musharraf also planned to attend the overall summit.

And Pakistan on Saturday welcomed Putin's initiative, saying it wants a de-escalation of tensions between the two nations.

"Pakistan has all along been pleading for settlement of all issues with India through dialogue," state-run news agency Associated Press of Pakistan quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan as saying. "Pakistan would welcome any initiative which leads to de-escalation of the tension by convincing India to come to the negotiating table."

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told a news conference in St. Petersburg that he had preliminary information that both Musharraf and Vajpayee would attend the meeting. He did not say whether Putin would meet with both leaders at the same time.

Mr. Bush said he hoped such a conference would help bring "calm and reason to the region."

Mr. Bush and Putin spoke to reporters after viewing a coronation carriage used by Catherine the Great in the 18th century. The carriage is on display at the Hermitage.

Tensions between India and Pakistan flared last week after an attack at an army camp in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 34 people, mostly the wives and children of Indian soldiers. India blamed the assault on Islamic militants based in Pakistan.

In ensuing days, dozens have died in cross-border shelling in the divided province, over which India and Pakistan have fought two wars. Vajpayee sent letters to Mr. Bush, Putin and British Prime Minister Tony Blair saying the attacks have tested his country's patience.