Pakistan, India elevate peace process

After three years of confidence building, Pakistan and India discussed ways to shift their peace process to a new level during a visit to Islamabad by India's new foreign minister yesterday.

Their talks addressed all the trickiest issues, including the core dispute over Kashmir, the divided mostly Muslim Himalayan region where 45,000 people died in an insurgency that has raged on the Indian side since 1989. It is the first visit to Pakistan by an Indian foreign minister for 15 months.

Levels of infiltration by militants into Indian Kashmir from Pakistan have fallen in the past three years, but Islamist militants have mounted bomb attacks elsewhere in India. The worst of these attacks killed 186 people in Mumbai in July and caused India to call a time-out in the peace process after India blamed a Pakistani militant group and the military spy agency.

The ministers said the first meeting of a joint anti-terrorism panel would be held in March. A fourth round of the composite dialogue, as the peace process is called, will also begin in March.

Pakistan's Kasuri accepted an invitation to go to New Delhi next month, when several accords will be finalised. These agreements include avoidance of risks of nuclear-related accidents, liberalisation of visas and expeditious return of people who inadvertently crossed the border.

Officials are still studying how to settle two other longstanding territorial disputes, notably Siachen Glacier, an icy wasteland the two armies have fought over since the 1980s, and Sir Creek, an estuary flowing into the Arabian Sea. Mukherjee, who had been defence minister until October, said officials would meet again at "an early date" to discuss Siachen, while a joint survey will begin tomorrow for Sir Creek.

Both sides have said they want to demilitarise Siachen, but they hit a snag over how to authenticate troop positions before withdrawing.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in a statement after meeting Mukherjee that confidence-building measures taken so far had "created a conducive atmosphere to resolve outstanding issues".

He said greater co-operation between the two nations, which have remained at odds since independence from British colonial rule in 1947, would flow from settling the disputes over Kashmir, Siachen and Sir Creek.

Mukherjee also invited Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to a South Asia regional summit in the Indian capital in April. But the visit Pakistan is waiting for is Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's. The Indian leader has not taken up an open invitation to visit Islamabad since his appointment in 2004, just months after the peace process began.