NEW DELHI/SRI NAGAR, 11 July — Dozens of protesters demonstrated outside the Pakistan Embassy in the  capital yesterday, demanding Islamabad releases Indian prisoners of war ahead of the weekend summit between the archrivals.

Indian officials estimate there are some 1,300 of its nationals in Pakistan’s jails — including over 50 soldiers captured during the India-Pakistan war of 1971. The protesters, who included parents of POWs shouted slogans and held placards reading: “Release Indian POWs”.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf are due to meet this weekend for the summit, which is largely expected to focus on the thorny Kashmir dispute over which the neighbours have fought two wars.

The summit, to be held in the city of Agra which is home to the Taj Mahal, or the monument to love, and is the first between the nuclear-armed neighbors in over two years.

The protesters also demanded that Pakistan ends support to activists fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. India accuses Pakistan of stoking the rebellion, a charge Islamabad denies.

One of the organizers of the protest, Maninderjit Singh Bitta, demanded that Pakistan hands over to India activists accused of triggering violence in Kashmir, who the protesters said were holed-up in Pakistan.

They also demanded that activists who hijacked an Indian Airlines plane from Katmandu in Nepal in December 1999, now suspected of being in Pakistan, be handed over to Indian authorities.

In another development, authorities in Sri Nagar said yesterday they had thwarted a rebel plan to explode a powerful bomb in violence-racked Kashmir, on the eve of the summit. Kashmir is expected to be a central issue in the talks, scheduled for July 14-16. “The militants planned to explode (the device) in Srinagar by remote control on the eve of the summit,” Border Security Force (BSF) spokesman Thirtha Acharya said.

The explosives were planted in a gas cylinder and a pipe and weighed 13 kg. The spokesman said 14 kg of military-grade explosive were also seized. Last week, New Delhi police arrested two men suspected of planning attacks to disrupt the visit by Pakistan’s president. It will be the first summit between the nuclear-capable neighbors in more than two years.

Meanwhile, India and Pakistan are pulling in different directions ahead of the talks and even a limited breakthrough on the issue that most divides them looks increasingly unlikely.

Fresh rhetoric on the Kashmir has cast a long shadow over the nuclear-armed neighbors’ first talks in two years, which both sides had hoped would at least reduce tension.

Analysts said hopes of making progress on critical nuclear confidence-building measures, a crippling military standoff on the world’s highest battlefield and trade were getting bleaker by the day.

“It is not looking good, there is very little space left for maneuverability at the summit,” said Kalim Bahadur, who teaches South Asian affairs at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Delhi has struck a positive note in the run-up to the summit, ordering a series of people-friendly unilateral measures to expand what one official described as a constituency of peace across the border. It eased travel restrictions on Pakistanis intending to visit India, offered to send a top army official to discuss ways to reduce tensions at the Kashmir frontier and proposed an expert group to cut the risk of nuclear war on the subcontinent.

 But so far Pakistan has been cool to the Indian gestures and has reiterated that Kashmir should be the central issue for the talks. On Monday it turned down the proposal for military officials to meet saying such a contact could be made after the summit.

It has also pressed ahead with plans to make contact with Kashmiri separatist leaders during Musharraf’s visit and has touched a raw nerve in Delhi by accusing its forces of repression in Kashmir.