INDIA/PAKISTAN: India and Pakistan will resume peace talks after the Indian elections in the summer, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said yesterday. Rahul Bedi reports from New Delhi
His announcement followed three days of discussions in Islamabad.
The breakthrough followed talks between the countries' foreign ministers to agree what they described as a road map for sustained dialogue on ways to resolve their decades-old dispute over Kashmir and other outstanding disputes between the nuclear rivals who came close to war 18 months ago.
Gen Musharraf said foreign secretaries from the two countries, the most senior civil servants in their respective ministries, would meet in May or June to launch the "composite dialogue" on several matters, with Kashmir high on their agenda.
This would be followed by the foreign ministers meeting in July or August, he added.
"The process we started is moving forward smoothly towards a solution," Gen Musharraf told a gathering clerics in Islamabad, promising to take into account the wishes of the Kashmiris in any solution to the 57-year-old dispute over the Muslim-majority principality. It is divided between the neighbours but claimed by both.
Pakistan denies Indian allegations that it is sponsoring the 15-year-old Muslim insurgency raging in Kashmir that has claimed over 65,000 lives.
However, Pakistan has promised to crack down on Islamist elements operating in the country.
Two of the three wars and an 11-week-long military engagement between India and Pakistan since independence in 1947 have been over Kashmir.
The rivals mobilized their armies in 2002 following the attack by suicide gunmen on the Indian parliament that was blamed on Pakistan. However, Pakistan denied all involvement.
"We do have before us now a sort of a basic roadmap for a Pakistan-India peace process to which we have both agreed," Pakistan's foreign secretary, Mr Riaz Khokhar, said. He was winding up two days of talks between mid-level foreign office civil servants in Islamabad with his Indian counterpart Mr Shashank.
In essence, India and Pakistan aim to resume discussions on eight contentious issues. Those discussions ended abruptly in 1999.
The agenda itself was first agreed to in 1997 but negotiators failed to make any headway before talks collapsed at a summit in 1999.
The peace process was revived by India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and Gen Musharraf when they met on the sidelines of a South Asian summit in Islamabad in January.
As an indication of warming relations, India's cricket team will shortly tour Pakistan for the first time in 14 years. The foreign secretaries will discuss Kashmir and confidence-building measures relating to peace and security that are intended to reduce the risk of nuclear and conventional war.
Both sides want to prevent any nuclear accident, especially after the revered Pakistani scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan admitted to selling atomic equipment and secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
The other subjects for discussion include the dispute over the 21,000ft-high Siachen glacier in the Himalayas; water-sharing problems relating to rivers and lakes; and the demarcation of maritime boundaries that have remained undecided since independence.
Terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial co-operation and the promotion of friendly cultural exchanges are other subjects for discussion.
