Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan meet

Leaders of India and Pakistan held their first direct talks today since they nearly went to war two years ago.

They met face-to-face on the sidelines of a South Asian summit amid high hopes for better relations between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart, Zafarullah Khan Jamali, wasted no time after the formal opening session of the seven-nation summit, meeting in a room for 15 minutes at the Jinnah Convention Centre in Islamabad.

State-run television showed the two men shaking hands and smiling warmly. It was not immediately clear what they discussed, although both sides had said they were unlikely to delve into contentious issues such as the disputed Kashmir region. State television described the talks as ”frank and cordial”.

The foreign ministers of the two countries were to meet later, Pakistani officials said on condition of anonymity.

Vajpayee has indicated that he wants talks to stick to regional issues. However, his chief national security adviser arrived in Pakistan on Friday, raising speculation that Kashmir may be broached, although no breakthrough is expected.

Earlier, Vajpayee and Jamali entered the opening session of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit side by side, and the Indian leader said in his speech that the region needed to put more than half-a-century of tension behind it.

“We have to change South Asia’s image and standing in the world,” said Vajpayee, making his first visit to Pakistan in five years. “We must make a transition from mistrust to trust, from discord to concord and from tension to peace.”

Jamali later hailed his Indian counterpart as a “poet” and a “visionary,” in front of the packed convention centre.

Outside, 10,000 police and commandos, mindful of two assassination attempts last month against Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, patrolled the deserted streets. All shops in a so-called red zone around the convention centre were shut. Motorcades of black armoured limousines ferried the leaders of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.

The three-day summit is to endorse a long-stalled free-trade area aimed at improving the lives of one-fifth of the world’s population, including hundreds of millions of its poorest people. The leaders will also update a decades-old agreement to combat international terrorism, bringing it into line with United Nations resolutions to choke off financing.