Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf arrived in India today for summit talks that carry dwindling hopes of any substantial progress in easing more than 50 years of mutual hostility.
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Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf arrives to a welcome ceremony at the presidential palace in New Delhi
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The run-up to the summit has been marked by a hardening of stances on both sides over the crucial issue of Kashmir, which is likely to form the focus of tomorrow’s summit with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
The decades-old territorial dispute has dogged relations and triggered two full-scale wars since the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
Gen Musharraf, accompanied by a 15-member delegation including Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, arrived in New Delhi at the beginning of what will be a three-day visit.
Gen Musharraf and Mr Vajpayee will move to the Taj Mahal town of Agra tomorrow for what will be the first Indo-Pakistan summit in more than two years.
Pakistan insists Kashmir is the key to resolving all other disputes and should therefore be the main focus of the summit agenda.
India is equally adamant its sovereign claim to Kashmir - divided between the two countries and claimed by both - is non-negotiable and that the summit must address issues like trade, cross-border terrorism and confidence-building measures between the nuclear capable rivals.
The lack of agreement on an agenda has wrapped the summit in a cloak of uncertainty and mutual suspicion, dimming what little hope there was of a genuine breakthrough.
In Kashmir itself, a surge in separatist-linked violence has claimed nearly 140 lives in the past nine days and served as a grim reminder of the ground realities underlining the summit.
AFP