India, Pakistan seek to keep peace process alive

INDIA: India and Pakistan resume a badly bruised peace process this week, hoping that the dialogue does not collapse because of bomb attacks in Mumbai blamed on Islamic militants.

The meeting of foreign secretaries and foreign ministers of the two old rivals, on the sidelines of a South Asian conference on Monday and Tuesday, comes after India put off talks scheduled for earlier this month in the wake of the July 11 train attacks.

More than 180 people were killed in the bombings, one of India's worst terror attacks. Indian investigators suspect Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and Pakistani military spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence used disaffected Indian Muslims to cause the carnage.

Islamabad and Lashkar have both denied any links to the attacks. But New Delhi has continued to sulk and diplomacy between the nuclear-powered neighbours has since plunged into a familiar spiral of allegations, denials and rhetoric.

This week's talks, on the sidelines of a regional conference in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka, would give both sides an opportunity to cool tempers and discuss ways to rebuild trust, albeit slowly, officials and analysts said.

"There is no cause for alarm. All that has happened so far is postponement of senior official level talks," a senior Indian foreign ministry official told Reuters.

"The Mumbai blasts were a serious development and we had to respond to it. But there is no need to jump to conclusions that the peace process would be allowed to collapse," he said.

Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan launched fresh moves to make peace after teetering on the brink of their fourth war in 2002. They have made considerable progress - ties between the two have been warmer than at any time since they were born out of the British-ruled subcontinent in 1947.

Although the dialogue has made little progress over resolving the central dispute of Kashmir - the Himalayan region both countries claim in full and rule in parts - leaders of the two have declared their peace process as irreversible.

At the talks in Dhaka, India is likely to reiterate its demand that Pakistan stop cross-border Islamist militant violence, the foreign ministry official said.

At the same time, it would also review a series of ongoing measures aimed at boosting trust between the neighbours and pushing links between their citizens.

Despite public anger in India against the peace process, New Delhi would not take any step that cannot be reversed, he added.

The Indian position is expected to reciprocated by Pakistan. "I hope the opportunity at Dhaka isn't wasted," Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said in an interview to the Indian magazine Outlook, published this weekend.

While the talks are not be expected to produce any breakthrough, even a mere reiteration of commitment to the peace process by both sides would go some distance in easing the strain on the peace process, analysts said.

"The first thing they have to do is resume the peace process," said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani army lieutenant-general and an independent analyst.

"That would be the foremost thing in order to restore the confidence of both the parties," he said.

The India-Pakistan deliberations in Dhaka are expected to overshadow the conference of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a seven-nation economic grouping whose progress has been held hostage in the past to tensions between its two biggest members.

The Dhaka conference plans to review progress of a regional free trade agreement that took effect this month and consider granting observer status in the group to the United States, the European Union and South Korea, Bangladeshi officials said..

NEW DELHI, Sunday, Reuters