Washington ? President Bush took a tough line toward a major ally in the war on terror Thursday, demanding that President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan “live up to his word” and crack down on extremists’ cross-border attacks that could lead to war with India.

While the State Department said it still had no assessment whether Musharraf was making good on his promise last winter to deny Pakistani territory to terrorists, Bush took the initiative as India and Pakistan teetered on the brink.

President Bush tells reporters that he is sending Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, background, to India and Pakistan to help ease tensions.

The president also deployed top American officials in the region Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is due there the end of next week and said: “We are making it very clear to both Pakistan and India that war will not serve their interests.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell weighed a decision, meanwhile, whether to withdraw nonessential U.S. diplomats from India and to advise 60,000 U.S. citizens in the country to leave.

A decision could be announced soon, a senior U.S. official said.

Locked in a dispute over the divided territory of Kashmir, and with 1 million troops in a standoff at their frontier, India and Pakistan continued to alarm the world with their troop movements and their rhetoric, with their nuclear armaments looming always in the background.

India regularly informs the United States through diplomatic channels that it intends to go to war over Kashmir if attacks by extremists are not curtailed, a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press.

But India has not advised the Bush administration how it would conduct such a conflict, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Powell will send his deputy, Richard Armitage, to India and Pakistan for talks next Thursday and Friday, with Rumsfeld arriving shortly afterward, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

“We have no desire to make ourselves the mediator,” Boucher said. He said any solution to the dispute over Kashmir depends on dialogue and taking into account the wishes of the people of the territory, he said.

Under rules guiding the 1947 partition of British India, overwhelmingly Muslim Kashmir went to Indian control because its Hindu maharajah wanted it. The United Nations has been on record since the late 1940s that Kashmir’s political status should be decided by its people, including a series of Security Council resolutions demanding plebiscites. Pakistan’s position is that the resolutions should be enforced.

India has rejected the resolutions, for reasons including that no test of the people’s will was required in other British India principalities divided because of their leaders’ wishes and that Pakistan has not withdrawn from territory it controls.

The Bush administration has focused its diplomacy on trying to pry the two armies apart.

Powell said Thursday “there is nothing active” in the way of a settlement for the two sides to discuss.

And, he said on PBS’ “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” that he did not think there is a role for an outside mediator at this point.

Asked if nuclear weapons would be used by India and Pakistan in the event of a conflict, Powell said: “I can’t answer that question, but I can say this: In my conversations with both sides, especially with the Pakistani side, I have made it clear that this really can’t be in anyone’s mind.”

“We are making it very clear to both Pakistan and India that war will not serve their interests,” Bush said after a Cabinet meeting. “We are part of an international coalition applying pressure to both parties.”

In particular, he said, Musharraf must keep his promise to stem attacks across the internationally established line that divides the predominantly Muslim region into Pakistani- and Indian-controlled areas.

“He must stop the incursions across the line of control. He must do so. He said he would do so,” the president said. “We and others are making it clear to him that he must live up to his word.”

Later at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld would not discuss his trip, saying the situation was so sensitive that any public comments might be misinterpreted.

“My instinct on this subject is to simply recognize that the two countries are clearly in a situation where they are not talking directly to each other, and they have substantial disagreements,” he said.

“What you have is two countries, each of which has a great many conventional forces and nuclear power, as well,” Rumsfeld said, and there are “millions and millions and millions of people who live in those two countries who would be damaged by a conflict.”

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said “the mission is to reduce the tension and help President Musharraf and (Indian) Prime Minister (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee to find a way out, to reduce the tension.”

Despite Pakistan’s assertion that it already has begun moving troops away from the Afghan-Pakistan border because of the tensions with India, Rumsfeld said U.S. officials had as yet seen no signs of a redeployment.

Even if the Pakistani troops are moved, Bush pledged to continue efforts to track down members of the al-Qaida terror network in Pakistan.

“We’re doing everything we can to shore up our effort on the Pakistan-Afghan border,” Bush said.