The leaders of India and Pakistan broke the ice between their countries on Tuesday with their first meeting since November's Mumbai attacks but analysts cautioned against hopes for a speedy breakthrough. India accused Pakistani militants supported by Pakistani state agencies of carrying out the attacks on Mumbai in which 166 people were killed and it remains deeply suspicious of Pakistan. India put a pause on a tentative five-year peace process as relations soured rapidly after the Mumbai attacks. Pakistan, which is keen to get talks with India back on track, has vowed to take action against any militants found involved in the Mumbai attacks. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told Reuters by telephone from Russia, where Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, that the two countries' top Foreign Ministry officials would soon meet for talks focusing on terrorism. The political leadership would then hold talks at a Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Egypt in mid-July, he said. The United States hopes better relations between India and Pakistan would allow the Pakistani military to move troops from its eastern border with India to its western border with Afghanistan where it is battling Pakistani Taleban. Pakistani political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said as well as pressure on India to get talks going, world opinion had swung in Pakistan's favour since it launched an offensive against militants in its northwest early last month. By agreeing to a meeting of their top foreign affairs officials, India was showing goodwill while keeping its options open, Rizvi said. “What the Indians have done is they have made a positive gesture for show but they still have kept the initiative with them,” Rizvi said. “The Indian government still has a margin to see what is the reaction to today's development in the domestic context and then they will make up their final mind,” he said. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars since their independence in 1947. Core issues India has been pressing Pakistan to take tougher action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which it blames for the Mumbai attack. It was incensed when a Pakistani court this month ordered the release from house arrest of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of the LeT. Indian analysts said given the degree of mistrust, they doubted any quick resumption of the so-called composite dialogue, which had brought warmer ties. “One should not read too much into the meeting as the conditions necessary for productive talks do not exist at the moment,” said Naresh Chandra, a former Indian ambassador to the United States. Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said the leaders' meeting on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, showed recognition of the fact the two countries had to get talks back on track. “India should take advantage of the fact that President Zardari and Prime Minister (Yusuf Raza) Gilani, and more importantly the main opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, are all in favour of the resumption of dialogue and of the improvement in relations with India,” Fatemi said. “It is very essential that they pick up the thread of negotiations on the core political issues,” he said, referring to their main dispute over the divided, Muslim-majority region of Kashmir. Before talks stalled in 2007, largely because of Pakistani domestic political turmoil, agreements were near on a maritime border dispute in the area of the Sir Creek estuary and on the Siachen glacier high in the Himalayas. “A lot of work has gone into discussions on Sir Creek and the draft of the agreement is very much there. Siachen agreement has been lying on the table,” Fatemi said. “If they demonstrate the necessary will and determination, they should be able to actually finalize some of the agreements which would then provide the necessary impetus,” he said.
