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By RON FOURNIER, AP White House Correspondent

MOSCOW (AP) - Bearing words of warning across a continent, President Bush (news - web sites) told wary European leaders Thursday "we've got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)" and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) to sever nuclear ties with Iran.

"If you arm Iran, you're liable to get the weapons pointed at you," the president said on the eve of signing a historic U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty. Bush considers Russia's dealings with Iran the single greatest proliferation threat on the globe, a senior adviser said en route to Moscow.

On a day that took him from the old East-West divide of Berlin to the heart of the former Soviet Union, a defiant Bush answered critics of his expanding anti-terror war plans. He denounced anyone who would appease terrorists or ignore threats to Europe.

"We will and must confront this conspiracy against our liberties and against our lives," the president said in an address to the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.

Hours later, squinting into an evening Moscow sun, Bush strode off Air Force One and stood on a small red carpet fringed in gold as a Russian military band played the American national anthem.

Bush and Putin meet Friday to sign a 10-year treaty binding the nations to reduce their nuclear stockpiles by about two-thirds — to a range of 1,700 to 2,200 each.

The three-page treaty has a preamble and just five articles. Article III establishes a commission to ensure that the terms are carried out and to handle any other issues that arise, according to a summary obtained by The Associated Press.

Hundreds of Communists and leftists staged a noisy protest at the U.S. Embassy here.

The German capital was quiet Thursday, as Bush responded to anti-war protesters who clogged city streets a day before — and to European leaders balking at his hopes of toppling Saddam.

"Wishful thinking might bring comfort, but not security. Call this a strategic challenge. Call it, as I do, axis of evil. Call it by any name you choose, but let us speak the truth: If we ignore this threat, we invite certain blackmail and place millions of our citizens in grave danger," Bush said to polite applause from lawmakers.

Terrorists are "familiar with the map of Europe" and could strike the continent next, he said.

U.S. officials said Iran recently conducted a successful flight test of its Shahab-3 ballistic missile and intends to develop missiles that could reach targets in Europe.

Bush came face to face with European opposition when three lawmakers from the ex-Communist party of Democratic Socialism, seated about 20 feet away, held up a banner reading, "Bush. Schroeder. Stop your wars."

Moments earlier, the U.S. delegation sat solemnly as parliament president Wolfgang Thierse, who introduced Bush, lectured against U.S. policy on global warming (news - web sites) and other issues.

In a news conference before the address, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declined to join Bush in pushing for a government change in Iraq. Separately, Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping suggested Germany did not have the resources to participate in military action against Saddam.

"We have no room for a new engagement," Scharping told German television.

Before leaving for Moscow, Bush said he would urge Putin to stop dealing with Iran, a country he said is governed by extremists.

Russia is helping build a nuclear reactor in Bushehr and scientists have contributed missile expertise to Iran. Russia has told U.S. officials the Bushehr facility is simply a civilian reactor, a response the White House finds questionable.

Iran's potential of someday arming deadly missiles is "going to be a problem for all of us, including Russia," Bush said.

Russia also has relations with Iraq and North Korea (news - web sites), the other two countries Bush includes in an "axis of evil."

Nuclear proliferation is a sour point in a U.S.-Russia relationship that has flourished since Sept. 11.

With Europe's support softening in time, Bush sought to mollify critics. "I have no war plans on my desk," he said. Aides said the phrase was technically accurate, despite the president's readiness to use military force against Saddam.

"We've got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein," Bush said with Schroeder at his side.

Touching on a controversy at home, Bush said he would not release an Aug. 6 memo that warned of al-Qaida hijackings, and he rejected the idea of an independent commission to investigate whether the government missed warning signs.

He said both ideas would compromise U.S. intelligence.

The 20-hour Berlin visit evoked the images of past U.S. presidents, including his father, who celebrated the power of freedom at the Berlin Wall. Bush himself has likened his plainspoken style to former President Reagan's demand to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall.

Standing before the German parliament, a few feet from the where the wall stood, Bush said, "Our generation faces new and grave threats to liberty, to the safety of our people and to civilization itself."

On Friday, Bush and Putin will sign what the White House calls "the Treaty of Moscow" or "the Moscow Treaty." Russia favors a longer title.

The leaders will sign a second document outlining a new framework for U.S.-Russian relations, including a vague pledge to cooperate on missile defense. They also will issue several joint statements, including ones on counterterrorism, economic ties, energy policy and expanding cultural and government contacts, U.S. officials said.

On another troubling issue, Bush said Putin "understands that a loose nuke could affect his security" and is doing what he can to prevent terrorists from getting nuclear materials from Russian stockpiles

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Russia also is helping Iran develop a long-range missile that could reach the United States or Europe, the officials say, and is transferring sophisticated conventional arms.

"Some of the things the Iranians are trying to acquire could only be aimed at American forces," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, said last week.

After more than five years of American complaints to Russia and the sharing of U.S. intelligence on Iran, the Bush administration is considering ways to increase the pressure. Officials say the administration won't rule out imposing costly economic penalties if Russia fails to halt the exports, although Washington is not ready to do so.

But Bush is certain to raise the issue in his meetings with Putin. "The president is very concerned about it," a White House official said.

Earlier this month in Iceland, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell failed to get a commitment to curb the practice from his Russian counterpart, Igor S. Ivanov. Russia, in its public statements, backs Tehran's claim that the purpose of Iran's nuclear program is to generate electricity, not weapons, and says its technology transfers won't threaten other countries.

"We have a disagreement," Powell said this month. "We have given them information, obviously not everything that we have, but enough to - in our view anyway - persuade them that there is a problem."

"They do not deny that they are selling things to Iran, but they tell us that they don't believe they are selling anything that individually or together should cause us to have the kind of concern that we do. But we do have that concern, and it will be an item of continuing discussion," Powell said.

Regional specialists say Iran's drive to acquire more weapons of mass destruction - Iran is known to have chemical weapons - stems from its 1980-1988 war with Iraq, when Baghdad demonstrated that it had superior missiles. Unable to obtain supplies from Europe, Iran turned to the Soviet Union, China and North Korea after the war.

Iran and the Soviets agreed to collaborate on the "peaceful use of nuclear energy" in 1989. Since the mid-1990s, Russia has been helping Iran build a nuclear reactor near Bushehr, 250 miles south of Tehran on the Persian Gulf coast, and has announced plans for a second one.

Because Iran has access to abundant energy with its large oil and gas deposits, analysts have long suspected that the purpose of Iran's nuclear program is to acquire the know-how and the material to build nuclear weapons. Officials suggest that Russia's nuclear cooperation may extend beyond the work at Bushehr.

"Russia continues to supply significant assistance on nearly all aspects of Tehran's nuclear program," CIA Director George J. Tenet told Congress earlier this year. Iran will be able to produce enough fuel for a nuclear weapon by late this decade and could produce one much faster with an outside supplier, he said. Israel's defense minister has said Iran is five years away from having a nuclear weapon.

Russia, meanwhile, has helped Iran develop its Shahab-3 missile, which is now in the late stage of development and has a range of about 800 miles - sufficient to reach Israel - and a new intercontinental ballistic missile that Tenet says could be deployed by 2015 and pose a direct threat to the United States.

When Boris N. Yeltsin was president of Russia, cooperation with Iran was viewed by some as a result of a breakdown of central control over Russia's military-industrial complex, a vast employer that includes a number of institutions and quasi-private companies.

Russia was desperately short of money at the time. Its industrial base was shrinking, and weapons and technology exports offered a lucrative source of hard currency and a way to prevent its experts from leaving.

But under Putin, that explanation for Russia's role seems less plausible. Russia's economy and oil-export revenues are growing. Putin has shown that he can override strong pressure from Russia's military establishment. Further, he has given every indication that he wants to bind Russia to the West.

"It's very difficult to fathom," said Leon S. Fuerth, who tried to persuade Russia to halt its cooperation with Iran during the Clinton administration, when he was national security adviser to Vice President Al Gore.

Russia may not have abandoned the belief, cited last year by Congressional Research Service analyst Kenneth Katzman, that it needs to offer incentives so Iran won't spread its radical ideology in the Muslim states on its periphery. There are also suspicions of a Moscow-Tehran alliance aimed at preventing U.S. dominance in the Middle East and at giving Russia a strong ally in the Muslim world.

The cooperation is a source of growing alarm to Israel, whose security the United States is committed to protecting. Concerns about Russia's technical help to Iran have been raised by Israeli officials and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

Officials say Bush will make the case to Putin that a nuclear-armed Iran could threaten not just the United States and its allies, but also Russia.

"The president, with Putin, will be very clear that there's a common threat here: a dangerous regime with weapons of mass destruction that is a leading state sponsor of terrorism," a White House official said.

The White House is not ruling out a number of possible sanctions if persuasion fails. Analysts say the possibilities include refusing to forgive Russian debts and not using Russian-enriched uranium to power U.S. spacecraft. The United States also might refuse to participate in a new, potentially lucrative Russian plan to store spent nuclear fuel from overseas on its soil, suggested Marvin Feuer of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Also, the United States could hold up Russian entry into the World Trade Organization, a key Putin goal.

But having so recently secured Russia as an ally in his war on terrorism and as a partner with the NATO alliance, Bush would doubtless be reluctant to turn back the clock in U.S.-Russian relations.

"Many of the things you might threaten to block are things that could aid in the further transformation of Russia - the WTO, for example," Fuerth said.