Islamabad, Pakistan ? With India’s prime minister unwilling to meet with Pakistan’s president at a summit this week in Kazakhstan, the Pakistani leader held out the possibility Sunday that Russia could serve as a mediator in the crisis over disputed Kashmir.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said there was “no plan” to meet Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of a regional summit in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The summit, which both leaders are attending, begins today.

India has ruled out such a meeting until it is convinced Musharraf has fulfilled his promise to stop Pakistan-based militants from crossing into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir.

With the two sides at an impasse, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will also attend the Almaty meeting, has offered to mediate the crisis between the nuclear rivals.

During a stopover Sunday in Tajikistan en route to the summit, Musharraf expressed optimism that Russia, a traditional ally of India, could help presumably by shuttling between the two sides.

“I think that President Putin can persuade India to join a dialogue,” Musharraf told reporters. “Pakistan will not start a war. We support solving the conflict through peaceful means.”

Musharraf said he would “meet anywhere and at any level” and wanted one-on-one talks with Vajpayee. But “if he doesn’t want to, I will not insist,” Musharraf said.

However, Musharraf is under conflicting pressure between the international community to stop cross-border terrorism and from Pakistan’s Muslim activists that he stand firmly behind Kashmiri rebels battling Indian rule in the contested Himalayan region.

Vajpayee, who arrived Sunday in Almaty, is likewise under strong domestic pressure to put an end to what many Indians consider terrorism.

“We have lost more than 1,000 people after Sept. 11,” India’s ambassador to the United States, Lalit Mansing, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Now, our leaders have taken the line that, look, we have to respond.”

Pakistani officials maintain that Musharraf is cracking down on the militants as he abandoned his Afghan Taliban allies last year and backed the U.S.-led war on terrorism. But the Pakistanis insist that India show flexibility by agreeing to talks on the future of Kashmir.

Without concessions from India, Pakistani officials fear a firestorm from Islamic activists, including extremists linked to al-Qaida and believed responsible from terrorist attacks on foreigners in Pakistan.

In a bid to gain international support, Pakistan said it will send envoys to the United States and elsewhere to relay Islamabad’s stand on the crisis that it wants to discuss a solution but India won’t come to the table.

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

Some Western diplomats and U.N. officials have left India and Pakistan amid concerns the military standoff, punctuated by daily shelling and gunfire across the border, could escalate into a full-fledged war.