Kashmir Issue May Draw a Summit Plea : South Asia: A peace call to rivals India and Pakistan is possible. But it might only show the superpowers’ diminished influence.

In what would be the superpowers’ first joint effort since the end of the Cold War to prevent a conflict from erupting in the Third World, President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev may call on India and Pakistan this week to cool their confrontation over Kashmir.

That, if continuing diplomatic hurdles can be cleared, would be the good news. The bad news is that even a summit-meeting appeal from the two superpowers may have little effect in the Third World these days.

U.S. officials have been pressing the Kremlin for weeks to put pressure on India over the dangerous situation in Kashmir. While they concede that they have gotten little response thus far, officials expressed hope that talks at the summit could yet produce some kind of joint effort.

The question is whether such a breakthrough would matter.

Both American and Soviet officials say that the confrontation between India and Pakistan over the disputed region could turn into a shooting war by midsummer--a war that would be especially dangerous because India has nuclear weapons and Pakistan is believed to be working on them.

“This is actually one of the most dangerous issues now on the horizon,” a White House official said, “. . . not only because of (the possibility of) a horrible, bloody war, but because it could have strategic implications.

“The issue is so important that both of us will have to discuss it,” he said.

Bush, speaking Wednesday at a diplomatic credential ceremony at the White House, urged India’s new Ambassador Abid Hussain to “seek negotiation and conciliation rather than confrontation.

“We call on both India and Pakistan to begin bilateral talks without preconditions,” Bush said, according to a transcript released by the Indian Embassy.

Yet Soviet and American officials confess that they have little leverage over India and Pakistan, so the two presidents’ actions might simply reveal how limited their ability to shape events has become.

India and Pakistan have been at odds over Kashmir since 1947, when both countries achieved independence from Britain. They have fought two wars over the issue, and a third war involved fighting in the area. In recent weeks, militants in the Indian-ruled section of Kashmir have stepped up their demands for independence, touching off an Indian crackdown and threats of war from both sides of the border.

Former State Department official Helmut Sonnenfeldt said that the issue has far wider implications than whether India and Pakistan go to war for a fourth time.

“Kashmir is a textbook case,” he said. “We have involved there . . . a nuclear power and a potential nuclear power; one country closely associated with the Soviet Union (India) and another with the United States (Pakistan). Yet we and the Soviets are not aligned against each other.”

At this week’s summit and in the future, he said, “We will find ourselves less in confrontation, but probably also less able to bring conflicts to an end.”

“The Soviet Union is concerned about Kashmir,” said Alexander Bovin, an editor of the Soviet government newspaper Izvestia. “We are in contact with both countries. But let’s take a realistic view: We do not have much leverage to influence the situation.”