India, Pakistan to sign military trust-boosting deals

NEW DELHI, Sunday (AFP) - Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan will next week sign accords to improve trust between their militaries including one giving advance warning of ballistic missile tests, newspaper reports said Saturday.

The agreements are expected to be signed during a four-day visit by Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh to Pakistan starting Sunday.

Another accord to be signed would establish a hotline between the coast guards of the two countries. These agreements come after New Delhi and Islamabad also recently agreed to set up a hotline to stop an accidental nuclear exchange.

Singh, making his second trip to Pakistan since February, would also push for an extradition treaty, reports in The Hindu and The Times of India newspapers said.

India says many of its fugitives are in Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies.

The missile test warning deal was struck during talks between Indian and Pakistani officials in New Delhi in August during the second round of peace talks held since the formal peace process began in January 2004.

The talks cover eight subjects including the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir, claimed by both India and Pakistan and trigger of two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, will review progress made in the second set of talks.

The Islamabad talks follow a meeting in mid-September between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York that ended without any big initiatives, contrary to some expectations.

Meanwhile India unveiled a slew of measures Friday to spur people-to-people contacts with Pakistan as part of moves to boost a slow-moving peace process ahead of a trip to Islamabad by India's foreign minister.

The security cabinet gave the go-ahead to liberalise consular and visa services - often difficult procedures for people on both sides of the border due to prickly relations between the South Asian nuclear rivals.

The liberalisation of consular facilities will need an amendment to a 1982 India-Pakistan accord, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said.

The amendment would be signed during Foreign Minister Natwar Singh's four-day visit to Islamabad, he said according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

The steps "are an amplification of measures that have been announced since October 2003," an Indian official said, referring to moves by India to improve ties.

Mukherjee also said visa rules would be relaxed for Pakistani nationals coming to India for medical treatment - first made popular after a successful heart operation on a Pakistani baby girl called Noor in 2003.