India has offered $25m (€20.5m) in aid to Pakistan, an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said, in the latest goodwill gesture between the two countries since a powerful earthquake devastated the disputed Kashmir region.

India and Pakistan opened high-level talks today aimed at solving their decades-old dispute over Kashmir with Pakistan denying it arms and trains a separatist insurgency in the region and accusing India of human rights abuses there.

Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan agreed today to notify each other before testing missiles, to open consulates and to work toward settling their five-decade dispute over Kashmir and other bilateral issues.

Pakistan will allow Indian airlines to resume flights in its airspace, the president said today in the latest sign of a thaw in relations between the south Asian nuclear rivals.

India is to restart a bus service to Pakistan that was stopped 17 months ago after an attack on its parliament that New Delhi blamed on terrorists supported by Islamabad.

Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan expelled each other’s top diplomats today, virtually slamming the door on hopes for a dialogue to settle the long-standing Kashmir dispute.

PAKISTAN said yesterday it would withdraw hundreds of thousands of troops deployed along its border with India to their “peacetime locations”, matching a similar pledge by India.