A landmark summit between rival nuclear powers India and Pakistan collapsed this evening over the issue of Kashmir, with the two sides failing to agree on a roadmap for future negotiations.
An expected joint declaration never materialised, despite intense negotiations between foreign ministers after two days of summit talks between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in the Taj Mahal town of Agra.
Mr Musharraf left Agra for Islamabad shortly after midnight following a farewell call to Mr Vajpayee, which lasted more than one hour but produced no 11th-hour compromise.
"We are going back disappointed but there is always hope," Pakistan government spokesman Mr Anwar Mahmood said.
Mr Mahmood also recalled that Mr Vajpayee had accepted an invitation on yesterday to visit Pakistan later in the year.
"We hope the process of dialogue will continue," he said, while pointing the finger of blame at India for the breakdown in talks on the final declaration.
"They did not agree to their own revised draft," he said.
Indian foreign ministry spokeswoman Ms Nirupama Rao issued a brief statement after Mr Musharraf's departure.
"I am disappointed to inform all of you, that although the commencement of the process and the beginning of the journey has taken place, the destination of an agreed joint statement has not been reached," Ms Rao told reporters.
Earlier in the day, Mr Musharraf had urged India to accept "the reality" that only progress on the Kashmir dispute could lead the South Asian powers away from more than 50 years of mutual hostility.
India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars since the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 - two of them over Kashmir, which is divided between the two countries and claimed by both.
Mr Vajpayee and Mr Musharraf had arrived in the Taj Mahal town of Agra on yesterday for the first Indo-Pakistan summit in more than two years.
AFP