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Nuke rivals agree on Kashmir talks

AP, Islamabad
Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan yesterday reached a broad agreement on the timetable for sustained peace talks on disputed Kashmir and other tough issues separating the South Asian neighbors, diplomats from both sides said.
Pakistan's foreign ministry said "a broad understanding was reached for the modalities and timeframe" of future talks. The agreement will be formalised today during a final meeting between the two nations' foreign secretaries.
Neither side would reveal the specifics of the timetable, but diplomats close to the talks 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. With Indian elections scheduled for April, no major breakthroughs were expected from the peace process anytime soon. However, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was expected to win the vote and continue the dialogue.
The three-day talks are expected to establish eight groups to settle issues that have festered for a half century and led to three wars, and almost caused a fourth in 2002 before international mediation averted the conflict.
Arun Kumar Singh, leader of the Indian Foreign Ministry team, met
with Pakistani Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar yesterday and reviewed the progress made in the talks so far.
The two delegations then drove to Murree, a hill resort 30 miles northeast of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, for luncheon talks, where the agreement was reached.
Future talks will focus on Kashmir, confidence-building measures in the nuclear field, terrorism and drugs, economic cooperation and a river dispute. The agenda for resolving decades of enmity was first agreed to in 1997 but failed to make any headway.
Even before the timetable agreement, there was optimism about a "new momentum" in their talks.
"There is realization in India and Pakistan that war is not an option, that you have to look at ways to find a peaceful resolution of the outstanding disputes between the two countries," Pakistani spokesman Masood Khan said Monday after a meeting between Foreign Ministry officials of the two countries.
Vajpayee and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf agreed to resume the dialogue last month. A July 2001 summit in Agra, India, failed to make any progress.
The talks represent the first real test of flexibility on long-entrenched positions, such as the disputed Kashmir region -- the cause of two of the countries' three
wars since their 1947 independence from Britain.
A 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.
In 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.
Early 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.
In recent months, India and Pakistan have moved to restore transportation links and diplomatic ties. Soldiers in November halted cross-border firing in Kashmir.
India is also set to embark on its first cricket tour of Pakistan since 1989.
The 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.