Indo-Pak talks to resume

INDIA: India and Pakistan announced Thursday the resumption of peace talks suspended for more than two years ago after gunmen killed 166 people in Mumbai.

In simultaneous statements issued in New Delhi and Islamabad, the nuclear-armed neighbours and long-time rivals said they had “agreed to resume dialogue on all issues.”

They also announced that Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi would visit India by July to “review progress” in the dialogue process.

The international community has been pushing both countries back to the negotiating table to help ease tensions in an already volatile region, and Washington welcomed the announcement.

The decision to resume talks was taken at a meeting between Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir in the Bhutanese capital Thimphu on Sunday.

Prior to the foreign ministers’ meeting, secretary-level talks will be held on a wide range of issues, including the vexed territorial dispute over Kashmir.

They will also discuss counter-terrorism topics such as progress on the trial in Pakistan of seven men charged over the Mumbai attacks of November 2008. The list of talking points is largely the same as those under discussion during the so-called “composite dialogue” which India broke off in the wake of the attacks, which were blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said the talks would begin “in the coming weeks.”

“We have to pick up the threads again,” Prakash told AFP, adding “This is still a step-by-step approach which is necessary to narrow the trust deficit.”

The White House said that President Barack Obama had encouraged “the idea of them sitting down and having peace talks”.

“We hope (they) will be productive in their outcome,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Indian analysts, however, sounded a note of caution. NEW DELHI, Friday, AFP