Pakistan and India sign pact at peace talks

PAKISTAN: NUCLEAR RIVALS India and Pakistan concluded their latest round of peace talks in Islamabad yesterday, claiming to …

PAKISTAN:NUCLEAR RIVALS India and Pakistan concluded their latest round of peace talks in Islamabad yesterday, claiming to have made significant progress in addition to signing a pact to provide consular access to prisoners.

Pakistan also agreed to release around 100 Indian prisoners in a goodwill gesture ahead of the stalled four-year-old dialogue, the first after Islamabad's civilian government assumed office following eight years of military rule.

"We made a lot of progress in our interaction and we hope to maintain this in the next round of talks which is expected in mid-July," Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said at a joint press conference with his Indian counterpart, Pranab Mukherjee, in Islamabad.

"Talks are progressing in a constructive manner on the Kashmir issue," Mr Qureshi said in reference to the Himalayan principality that is divided between the two sides but claimed by both and over which two of the three wars and an 11-week border skirmish between the neighbours had been fought after independence 61 years ago.

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Mr Qureshi said the consular agreement would facilitate the early release of prisoners held in each others' jails after they were identified.

Hundreds of detainees remain in prisons in either country, the majority of them fishermen who stray inadvertently into the other's boundaries.

The foreign ministers' talks were held two days after India accused Pakistani troops of firing across their disputed Kashmir border for the second time in less than a week in violation of a five-year-old ceasefire agreement.

India said one of its soldiers had died during Monday's unprovoked attack by Pakistan which denied all involvement in the incident.

This was the first such allegation by India after the two countries agreed the ceasefire and began peace talks.

The dialogue was also overshadowed by last week's wave of bombings in India's western tourist city of Jaipur that killed 61 people, including seven women and 10 children.

In the past India has accused Pakistan-based militant insurgents fighting its control over Kashmir for such attacks, but has stopped short of blaming Islamabad for the Jaipur blasts.

The dialogue between the two sides has focused on eight contentious issues that include Kashmir, unresolved maritime boundaries, cross-border terrorism, narcotics smuggling, nuclear and conventional military confidence building measures and economic co-operation.

Unresolved frontiers in the marshy Sir Creek region alongside the Arabian Sea and the 21-year-old military face-off along the 6,400m (21,000ft) high northern Siachen glacier were also part of the dialogue.

Diplomats in Delhi, however, said the instability of Pakistan's new coalition government could hinder progress in the bilateral 'dialogue.