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Indo-Pak leaders to notify before missile test

AFP, New Delhi
Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan yesterday agreed to notify each other before testing any ballistic missiles and to set up a hotline between their foreign secretaries, they said in a common statement.
In a bid to prevent an accidental nuclear exchange "India and Pakistan have agreed to pre-notify each other before any missile test and have also agreed to set up a hotline between the foreign secretaries," they said.
Indian Foreign Ministry senior official Meera Shankar said both sides had agreed "to operationalise the hotline between the two foreign secretaries" and upgrade an existing military hotline by September.
India and Pakistan held a second day of talks yesterday aimed at building military trust and avoiding an accidental nuclear war between the rivals, a foreign ministry official said.
The two sides were hoping during the talks slated to wind up later in the day to finalise an agreement to notify each other ahead of missile tests and establish a nuclear hotline to reduce risks of nuclear accidents.
"Talks are still going on," the foreign ministry official said later Saturday. "We will know the details only after they end."
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan routinely conduct missile tests that often vitiate the atmosphere of their ongoing peace process.
A foreign ministry spokesman had said Thursday that if the agreement on pre-notifying missile tests was finalised, it would be announced at the end of the talks.
It is the third round of discussions on building so-called nuclear confidence building measures (CBMs). The previous rounds were held in June and December.
During the December talks, the South Asian rivals had reported
"considerable" progress, an Indian official said, with both sides agreeing that the region could not be described as a "nuclear flashpoint" anymore.
They also agreed to push forward plans for a nuclear hotline but failed to reach a deal on advanced warning of ballistic missile tests.
Although the two countries normally inform each other when holding missile tests, no formal deal has been signed.
In January, as they do annually, the two countries exchanged updated lists of their nuclear facilities in line with a bilateral agreement signed in 1988 prohibiting attacks against each other's nuclear installations.
India and Pakistan conducted tit-for-tat nuclear weapons tests in May 1998. They have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
The talks are part of a composite
dialogue process that began last year after the rivals came close to a fourth war in 2002.
The dialogue process is aimed at resolving eight disputes between India and Pakistan, including the core problem of Kashmir, where an Islamic insurgency has killed tens of thousands of people since 1989.
Next week, negotiators from the two sides will meet in New Delhi to discuss other confidence-building measures as well as ways to expand commercial ties.
A meeting between the two foreign secretaries is likely in October following a possible meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly session in September in New York.