The two leaders of India and Pakistan made a promising start to their landmark summit here Sunday, holding an extended 90-minute one-on-one session that both sides described as "positive."
Following their private talks held at a luxury hotel in the shadow of the Taj Mahal, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee held a working lunch with their respective delegations.
The summit meeting -- the first in more than two years -- is looking to draft a road map for guiding the nuclear-capable South Asian rivals away from more than half a century of mutual hostility and mistrust.
Senior officials on both sides described the one-on-one meeting -- originally expected to last less than one hour -- as "very positive."
"I think there is reason to be cautiously optimistic," Pakistan government spokesman Anwar Mahmood told AFP.
"That the session lasted so long was a very, very good sign," he added.
The positive beginning to the talks was welcomed in the wake of intense pre-summit bickering over the agenda, particularly the priority accorded to the crucial issue of the Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Indian Information Minister Sushma Swaraj said she was optimistic that something "positive and tangible" would emerge and argued that concern over the lack of a concrete agenda was misplaced.
"This summit is not time bound, nothing is structured and that is its beauty," Swaraj told AFP. "Everything is open and flexible."
Delegation talks headed by the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan were held parallel to the Vajpayee-Musharraf summit.
The issues under discussion are as complex as the stakes are high.
India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars since the partition of the sub-continent in 1947 -- two of them over Kashmir, which is divided between the two countries and claimed by both.
An armed Muslim separatist insurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir -- which New Delhi alleges is sponsored by Pakistan in the form of a "proxy war" -- has claimed more than 35,000 lives since its launch in 1989, according to official Indian figures -- AGRA, India (AFP)
