Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, agreed on Sunday to work to restore a cross-border ceasefire after a spate of shootings in order to improve strained ties, officials said.
Singh and Sharif met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, amid heightened tension between the nuclear-armed neighbors over the Kashmir region, sparked by series of fatal clashes on their de facto Himalayan border.
India emerged from the meeting of more than an hour calling the talks “useful” while Pakistan called the atmosphere “very positive.”
They both expressed a desire to improve ties but agreed that “peace and tranquility across the LOC (Line of Control) is a precondition,” Indian national security adviser Shivshankar Menon told reporters in New York.
“We need to address the issues that we face today and then we hope to move it forward,” he said.
Pakistan’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs Jalil Abbas Jilani told reporters the New York meeting set the stage for future cooperation even though they did not reach specific agreements.
“The most significant aspect of the meeting was that the leaders expressed their commitment to … better relations between the two countries,” he told reporters at a separate New York briefing.
“Both sides wish to see a better India-Pakistan relationship than we have today,” said Menon.
A series of fatal clashes along the so-called Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan have killed at least eight soldiers from both countries in less than two months. The South Asia Terrorism Portal, a website that tracks the violence, says this year’s toll is 44 members of the security forces, up from 17 for all of last year.
