NEW DELHI, India ? As Indian and Pakistani leaders headed to a regional summit where they aren’t likely to talk peace – or even talk at all – India’s defense minister said Sunday his nation won’t be “impulsive” in the crisis that threatens to put them at war.

Some Western diplomats and U.N. officials have left India and Pakistan the past few days amid concerns that the standoff, punctuated by daily shelling and gunfire across the border, could escalate into war between the nuclear-armed rivals.

But Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, in a tearful speech to a military conference in Singapore, said Sunday that India would neither be “impulsive” with Pakistan nor weak in “the war against terrorism, the same terrorism which hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.”

Fernandes reiterated India’s pledge to avoid first use of nuclear weapons.

Pakistan, which has a smaller military, has not ruled out a first nuclear strike, although Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf told CNN on Saturday that “any sane individual” would ensure that any conflict would not go nuclear.

“There is no way India will ever use a nuclear weapon other than as a deterrent. We stand by our nuclear doctrine,” Fernandes said. “India will not get drawn into a nuclear arms race.”

Musharraf has said for months he wants dialogue with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but Vajpayee says India first must see a stop to terrorist attacks by Islamic militants crossing into the Indian part of the disputed province of Kashmir. Both South Asian rivals claim the Himalayan region in its entirety.

Musharraf made no public comments as he left Islamabad on Sunday for the regional summit of 16 leaders – from countries ranging from Egypt to China – to be held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, from Monday through Wednesday. Musharraf was accompanied by Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and Information Minister Nisar Memon. He stopped off overnight in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, before heading for Almaty on Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has hoped the summit could help pull India and Pakistan away from their war footing.

Musharraf and Vajpayee have indicated they would meet with Putin and officials from other worried nations trying to prevent war. But India has said talks with Pakistan are not possible until and unless it sees proof that cross-border terrorism is being stopped.

“There is no plan for talks,” Vajpayee said as he departed New Delhi. “If we see the result on the ground of Gen. Musharraf’s statement, we shall certainly give it a serious consideration.”

Although India says Islamic militants crossing the border from Pakistan have carried out terror attacks, including a deadly assault on the Indian Parliament in December that provoked the latest crisis, Musharraf has insisted he is cracking down.

Musharraf disputes India’s contention that Pakistan actively helps the militants, saying it provides only moral and diplomatic support for Kashmiris, most of them Muslims, who want either independence or a merger with Islamic Pakistan. Musharraf has called their campaign a “genuine freedom struggle.”

Fresh mortar and artillery fire broke out Sunday across the line that divides Kashmir.

An early morning barrage from the Pakistan side killed a 20-year-old woman and wounded five other civilians, said witnesses in the village of Garkhal, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir state.

In Naugam, which is 28 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir, a suspected Muslim militant was killed by Indian army soldiers in a gunbattle, according to an Indian army spokesman who declined to be identified by name.

A Pakistani military spokesman said “unprovoked” artillery and military fire from the Indian side killed two civilians and injured seven people, including three children.

India’s military said Sunday its troops had fired artillery into the Pakistani side of the Naushahra and Sunderbani areas north of Srinagar on Saturday, killing five Pakistani soldiers and destroying two bunkers. The Pakistani military spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the claim false.

In Singapore, Fernandes wept as he recounted violence against Indians in Kashmir.

“I’m sorry for the difficulty I have every time I think of this,” the defense minister said. “The country is angry and anguished. The pressure on our prime minister … to launch an attack is intense.”

This week, Washington is separately dispatching two envoys – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage – to try to ease tensions in the region.

Malaysia on Sunday became the latest nation to urge families of diplomats and its nonessential embassy staff to leave India and Pakistan. Others making similar calls have included the United States, Britain, France, Israel, South Korea and the United Nations.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said there was “considerable fear” of war, and said Malaysia’s embassies in New Delhi and Islamabad had been instructed to activate contingency plans to evacuate all its citizens.