India, Pakistan to review peace process ahead of summit

ISLAMABAD, Wednesday (AFP) Nuclear rivals Pakistan and India hold high-level talks this week to nudge forward their slow-moving peace process and set the agenda for a rare meeting between their leaders, officials and analysts said.

Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran will hold discussions with Pakistani counterpart Riaz Mohammed Khan on Thursday, Pakistan's foreign office said.

"It is an important meeting and it comes at the end of the second round of talks" under the so-called "composite dialogue" between the two sides, Pakistani foreign office spokesman Naeem Khan told AFP.

The Indian official's arrival comes exactly two weeks before Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan are due to meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly conference.

New Delhi and Islamabad launched the peace process in January 2004 and a flood of feel-good measures followed, including a historic bus service across the divided region of Kashmir and the resumption of sporting ties.

But progress has been sluggish on central issues, especially the fate of Kashmir itself. The Himalayan territory has sparked two of the three wars on the subcontinent since independence in 1947.

This week's talks could help "firm up the agenda" before Singh and Musharraf meet in New York on September 14, a senior Pakistani foreign ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The last time the two leaders met - to coincide with an India-Pakistan cricket match in New Delhi in April - they jointly declared the peace process "irreversible".

But the official said Islamabad was not satisfied with the pace of the dialogue so far.

"We expect the meeting between the two foreign secretaries to be a good opportunity to review all the issues and come out with ideas to speed up the process and make it result-oriented," the official said.

Foreign policy analysts in New Delhi were more reserved in their expectations, stressing the meeting was the logical next step in the peace process.

"This is not a politically pregnant meeting, this is a pro forma meeting that has been set as per the timetable agreed upon by the two countries," said Bharat Karnad, research professor in national security studies at the Center for Policy Research, a think-tank based in New Delhi.