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KIEV, Monday (AFP,Reuters) UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed hope that a regional summit in Kazakhstan this week will be able to deter Indian and Pakistani leaders from escalating their dispute over Kashmir.

Referring to the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin together with his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin at the Almaty conference Tuesday, Annan said he was "confident he (Putin) and the Chinese president will be able to dissuade them" from raising the level of the dispute over Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan claim.

Annan noted that he would be visiting Moscow on Tuesday and said he "looked forward to discussing the situation with President Putin."

He said he hoped Putin "will be able to speak to both leaders," Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

Annan also said the UN decision to evacuate the families of its staff from Pakistan and India "should be seen as a precautionary measure and not as an imdication that war in imminent."

"I hope we will be able to avoid that," he added.

Meanwhile Chinese President Jiang Zemin will meet Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in Almaty on Tuesday to try to ease tension between the nuclear-armed rivals.

The official Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday as saying the meetings would take place at a 16-nation security conference in the Kazakh capital.

Meanwhile Asian leaders converge on the Kazakh commercial capital Almaty on Monday for a security forum focused on tensions between nuclear neighbours India and Pakistan with Russian President Vladimir Putin playing mediator.

Russia has said that apart from holding meetings with Vajpayee and Musharraf, Putin may try to persuade the two leaders to meet face-to-face -- a possibility all but ruled out by India.

Vajpayee, who arrived in Almaty on Sunday night, told reporters before leaving New Delhi "there was no such plan" as far as direct talks with Musharraf were concerned.

The Pakistani military leader, on the contrary, welcomed such a meeting during a brief visit to Tajikistan en route to Almaty. But Musharraf made clear he would be reluctant to renew the offer if Vajpayee kept rejecting it.

"I have several times proposed a meeting to Vajpayee but if he does not want it, I think that in future there is no point in raising this question again," he said through a Russian translator. Meanwhile india's ambassador to Almaty said that there would be no talks "at any level" between India and Pakistan on their dispute over Kashmir during a regional summit in Kazakhstan this week, India's ambassador to Almaty said Sunday.

"There will be no talks at any level," envoy Vidya Sagar Verma told AFP shortly before Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was due to arrive in the Kazakhstan economic capital.

He added there would be no secret meetings between officials from either delegation.

Vajpayee was due to dedicate most of his first full day in Almaty to an official visit to Kazakhstan, including talks with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and other meetings. He was to meet Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai in the evening.

India's Defence Minister George Fernandes, at a conference in Singapore, sought on Sunday to allay fears of nuclear war. "I don't think anyone should be worried about the nuclear thing. I don't know who started this," he said.

Musharraf has also said nuclear war was unthinkable for any sane person.

Fernandes said their confrontation could end if Islamabad handed over Indian terrorist suspects and ended cross-border raids by militants.

The confrontation is going to be by far the most pressing concern for delegates from the 16 nations taking part in the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia (CICA), who are holding their plenary session on Tuesday.

Meanwhile.The dramatic pull-out of families of UN personnel and withdrawal of foreigners from India and Pakistan is part of the international community's efforts to put "concerted pressure" on the nuclear-armed rivals, a high-placed diplomatic source said.

"There is concerted pressure," the diplomat told AFP on Sunday after a wave of Western nations announced at the weekend they were telling their citizens to get out of India, just a few days after similar warnings over Pakistan.

"To a certain extent we have been taken hostage by the decision of the secretary general (Kofi Annan), probably under the influence of the United States and Great Britain," a UN employee said on condition of anonymity.

"We were ordered to send our families home and I'm not sure this decision needed to be taken so urgently," he said.

Diplomats pointed to the fact that five or six countries made their announcements "in just a few hours on Friday evening. That cannot be a coincidence -- it's a concerted initiative".

Meanwhile Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh on Sunday ruled out any arms exports of the Swedish defense contractor Bofors to India or Pakistan because of the increased tension in south Asia.

Bofors, which is also a major Swedish industrial group, is in competition with South African and Israeli weapons manufacturers to deliver mortars to India worth some 20 billion Swedish kronors (2.2 billion euros, two billion dollars).

"If Bofors were to win the mortars contract with India, it would be unthinkable that the group would obtain government authorisation to export" the weapons in the current conditions, Lindh said according to Swedish news agency TT.

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