Both sides reiterated their intention to carry forward the dialogue process in a constructive and purposeful manner and expand trade and travel across the cease-fire line dividing disputed Kashmir.
The agreements were made at a meeting between the two countries’ top diplomats — Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir. Contacts between the two nuclear-armed neighbors are nevertheless considered key to easing tensions in South Asia.
The talks mark a revival of a tentative peace process, which collapsed two years ago after gunmen killed 166 people in Mumbai in November 2008 in attacks that India blamed on Pakistani extremists.
The talks made better progress than expected, with India and Pakistan issuing a joint statement and the foreign secretaries appearing at a previously unscheduled joint news conference.
In their statement, the foreign secretaries said that India and Pakistan would work to build confidence over their nuclear and conventional weapons capability.
A meeting of experts would be held “to consider additional measures... to build trust and confidence and promote peace and security,” the statement said. The foreign secretaries also agreed to hold a meeting of experts to promote trade and travel across the Line of Control, the cease-fire line which divides Kashmir.
“We must help the people of Jammu and Kashmir to connect with each other; to travel, to trade,” Rao said at the news conference.
After many false starts in peace talks in the past, expectations for the foreign secretaries’ meeting had been kept deliberately low in both countries.
However, a carefully worded joint statement listed no concrete agreement other than a commitment to meet again in New Delhi, at a date yet to be announced, to prepare for a pre-arranged foreign ministers’ meeting in July.
The statement said talks were “frank and cordial.”
However, India remains deeply concerned about terrorism from Pakistan, exacerbated by the US discovery of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan last month, and Pakistan still considers India its primary threat despite a Taleban insurgency at home.
Rao also met with Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar.
