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JAMMU, India, Friday (Reuters) Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said on Friday that India would not be able to hold meaningful peace talks with Pakistan if militant attacks continued.

"We would like to have meaningful talks, but if terrorist activities continue, that will not be possible," Vajpayee told a news conference in Jammu, winter capital of Indian Kashmir.

He was speaking after twin car bombings in Bombay on Monday which killed 52 people and a spate of attacks in Kashmir, where India faces a separatist revolt in its only Muslim-majority state. Indian police said the Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in the attacks both in Bombay and Kashmir.

Meanwhile Pakistan was upbeat Friday about hopes of restoring airlinks with rival India, despite the failure of this week's talks to produce an agreement and an apparent snag over the issue of future overflight bans.

"There is no impasse," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid told AFP. "The talks to restore airlinks between India and Pakistan in Islamabad are not the end of the story, but the beginning of a process."

Two days of talks between aviation officials and experts from Pakistan and India in the garrison city Rawalpindi broke down when the Indian side reportedly refused Pakistan's demand for guarantees against unilateral overflight bans. The six-member Indian delegation had travelled to Pakistan to discuss lifting a 20-month suspension on airlinks imposed by India in the wake of an attack on New Delhi's parliament in 2001 that India has blamed on Pakistan-based militants. Pakistan has set the guarantees as a condition for lifting its own ban on Indian overflights, which followed the Indian decision.

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