ISLAMABAD, 20 July 2004 — Top Pakistani and Indian Foreign Ministry officials held talks here yesterday to push forward the peace process between their countries, which are in a 56-year-old dispute about the region of Kashmir.

Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar and his Indian counterpart Shashank met for about 75 minutes on the sidelines of preparations for a two-day meeting of South Asian foreign ministers.

“We had a good discussion,” Khokhar told reporters. They exchanged views on confidence-building measures and “some ideas” to give impetus to the dialogue process, he said without elaborating.

“These ideas will now be discussed by the foreign ministers who will spell out the details later.”

In New Delhi last month the two foreign secretaries led the first talks between the nuclear armed rivals in three years on the festering dispute over the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

The issue is also expected to be raised when India’s Foreign Minister Natwar Singh meets Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri on the sidelines of the July 20-21 regional meet of South Asian foreign ministers.

Natwar arrived in Islamabad at 4:00 p.m. (1100 GMT) for his first visit to Pakistan since taking office in May in the new left-leaning Congress government.

“I will take this opportunity to take the peace process further,” he told Indian reporters who met him at Islamabad airport.

It will be his third meeting with Kasuri in a month

Natwar was also expected to meet President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, who is to take over as Pakistan’s prime minister next month.

Discussions would revolve around the Kashmir dispute and ways to advance the peace process, an Indian official said in New Delhi.

The two met in China on the sidelines of a meeting of 22 Asian foreign ministers in June and again in July on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum in Jakarta.

Amid a thaw in tensions, the two sides have agreed to strive for a final settlement to the Kashmir dispute and to reopen consulates in Karachi and Bombay that were closed in 1994.

In a joint statement late June they pledged to “continue the sustained and serious dialogue to find a peaceful, negotiated final settlement” on Kashmir, the cause of two of their three wars since independence in 1947.

They also agreed to restore staff strength at their embassies in New Delhi and Islamabad to 110, the level before a near war in 2002; to formalize an agreement to notify each other of missile tests; and to release all fishermen and other civilians who strayed into each other’s territory.

The peace process was kickstarted in April 2003 by India’s then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the new left-leaning government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has vowed to continue to seek peace with Pakistan.

The foreign ministers of Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka will join the Indian and Pakistani ministers at the July 20-21 South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting.

Well-informed diplomatic sources said that peace and security are the issues to be addressed before making any tangible development in various fields since without this required amount of confidence needed for making any headway would not be possible.

The first day’s deliberations of the SAARC standing committee’s 30th session went off well, sources said. The interesting aspect of the two-day meeting was that India has been the only country represented by two foreign secretaries while all other six states had only one representative foreign secretary in the meeting. India’s Shashank and secretary-designate Shyam Saran represented the country at the meeting.

Diplomatic observers are of the view that economic integration, confidence building and preventive diplomacy are the ingredients without which no progress in the organization could be assured. These all are interrelated and without addressing peace and security, no concrete progress would be possible because it is an integral part of the confidence building, they said.

SAARC is rich in formulation of vision and it has progressed well in the sector of vision but it is lacking in institutionalizing the proces. The area in which the organization has so far failed miserably is building of institutions where no progress could be reported as yet, the observers said.

The infrastructure considered to be essential for making any development is nonexistent in terms of mutual agreement, the sources added. With this reference SAARC has been proving a debating club that is required to be made a practical organization through solid actions and for this it is a must that the attitude of mutual respect prevail and every member country should be treated equally.

The misunderstanding existing between any two member countries should also be addressed in a manner that disputes and tensions may vanish among them, the observers said.

The sources said that the major circus is revolving around the energy specific subjects in the ongoing process of SAARC.

The experts are working seriously on a proposal to set up a regional energy center that will cater to the energy needs of the member countries and the same would be a source of help in any emergency. Pakistan in a generous move has offered to host such a center.

Meanwhile, Shyam Saran, the secretary-designate, said that bilateral relations between Pakistan and India have their impact on theSAARC but these are heading in the desired direction.

He was of the view that ever since the new government has taken over in India, the pace on improvement of relations with Pakistan has increased.

To a question he said that in the presence of violence in Kashmir it would be difficult for the authorities concerned to decide to pull out from that area. He said that the authorities were working on it.

In regard to the cease-fire in Kashmir, the Indian secretary-designate said that although some people were working on it, the real problem was division in the ranks of the fighters in Kashmir.

They were in different factions and groups and had divergent views but still they were being contacted.