India, Pakistan agree on Kashmir talks

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- India and Pakistan agreed Tuesday to a timetable for peace talks both sides hope will end a bitter history of enmity and mistrust, striking the deal at a closed-door meeting of diplomats at a mountain retreat not far from their disputed border region.\nThe breakthrough signaled optimism that change was both realistic and possible, just two years after the neighbors nearly went to war.\n"Things are moving in a positive direction," India's Foreign Secretary Shashank, who uses one name, said Tuesday after arriving in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.\nThe agreement, announced in a Pakistan Foreign Ministry statement, will be finalized Wednesday during a meeting between Shashank and his Pakistani counterpart, Riaz Khokhar. After years of sputtering efforts to end a conflict that has raged for more than half a century, diplomats are hopeful the moment has arrived for progress.\n"A broad understanding was reached on the modalities and the time frame," the Pakistani statement said.\nNeither side would reveal the specifics of the timetable. However, India and Pakistan are expected to set up eight groups to tackle the decades-old Kashmir dispute, build confidence and deal with issues such as nuclear arms, terrorism, drugs and trade. The agenda was first agreed to in 1997 but failed to make any headway.\nDiplomats close to the talks also said technical level discussions about a bus service in divided Kashmir and another bus and train route from Pakistan's Sindh province would take place next month.\nWith Indian elections due in April, no major breakthroughs are expected from the peace process anytime soon. However, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is expected to win the vote and continue the dialogue.\nIn recent months, India and Pakistan have moved to restore transportation links and diplomatic ties, and their soldiers halted cross-border firing in Kashmir, the source of two of the three wars between the South Asian rivals. A fourth war was averted in 2002 amid intense international mediation.\nOn Tuesday, the two delegations drove to Murree, a hilltop resort 30 miles northeast of Islamabad, and just a few miles from the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir, where the agreement was reached over lunch.\nThe three-day summit, which ends Wednesday, comes after Vajpayee and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf decided last month to resume the dialogue. A July 2001 summit in Agra, India failed to make any progress.\nA cease-fire line divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, but both claim the territory in its entirety. More than 65,000 people have been killed in an insurgency that has raged in Indian-controlled portions of the territory since 1989.\nIn January, Vajpayee agreed to discuss Kashmir while Musharraf promised not to support terrorism in Pakistani territory directed against India. India accuses Pakistan of training and arming Islamic guerrillas fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan, a charge Pakistan denies.\nEarly this month, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said Pakistan's government has taken effective measures against Islamic militant groups based in Pakistan, leading to a decline in incursions into Indian-controlled Kashmir.\nThe talks on a Kashmir bus service and a possible train and bus route between Pakistan's southern Sindh province and India's northwestern Rajasthan state are expected to occur on March 8-9 and March 29-30, the diplomats said.