First round of talks formal peace talks at Secretary's level, between Pakistan and India in New Delhi, was completed on Monday. Discussions between the two countries will continue on Tuesday also. The delegates of both countries avoided any controversial issues. Pakistan was represented by the Secretary Interior, Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, and Pakistan's High Commissioner in India, Shahid Malik, while the Indian delegation was led by G.K. Pillai, the Home Secretary.
Later, Pakistan High Commissioner Shahid Malik, and the Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai declared the dialogue as positive. During the talks the matters of relaxing visa restrictions and specially the issue of 3-month multiple journey visas for businessmen came up for discussions.
The Interior/Home Secretaries also discussed the issues of the cross-border terrorism, counterfeit currency notes and drugs smuggling. The talks also covered the forthcoming semi-final match between Pakistan and India. Both the countries did not touch on controversies like Samjotha Express, and Mumbai attacks. The second round of dialogue will start at 1 pm Indian Standard Time Tuesday.
Reuters adds: Indian and Pakistani officials began their first formal peace talks since the 2008 Mumbai attacks on Monday in a meeting pushed into the background by the decision of their leaders to meet during a World Cup cricket match between the two countries.
The two home secretaries, the top civil servants in charge of security issues, met in New Delhi to repair relations between nuclear rivals broken off the attacks, when Pakistani militants killed 166 people in a three-day shooting spree in India's financial capital. The talks are due to end on Tuesday, but the focus has already turned to Wednesday's World Cup cricket semi-final between the two old rivals after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani to the game.
"Talks are extremely positive and in the right direction," Indian Home Secretary Gopal Pillai told reporters at the end of the first day of talks. The two sides would issue a joint statement on Tuesday afternoon, he added. Progress in Monday's talks was anyway expected to be small. They are about preparing the groundwork for a ministerial meeting in July that would put issues like Kashmir, terrorism and trade on the negotiating table in what is known as the "composite dialogue".
Wednesday's match has been heralded as "cricket diplomacy", something of a tradition between the two countries that has at least helped ease tensions in the past. Tickets sell on the black market for as much as $2,000 in a country where 450 million live on less than $1.25 a day. On Monday, an estimated 1,000 angry protesters hurled stones and clashed with police outside the stadium in the tiny town of Mohali, but police said the protests were not connected with a shortage of tickets that has angered fans in several other Indian cities.