NEW DELHI (Reuters) ? Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers said on Wednesday they have a responsibility to mend ties between the nuclear-armed rival countries to reduce tension in the region, made all the more urgent with a U.S. troops drawdown in Afghanistan looming.
Expectations of a breakthrough in peace talks remain low, but the fact the South Asian rivals are talking is a sign that neither side wants to slide back towards conflict in the world's most dangerous region.
Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart, Hina Rabbani Khar, began talks in New Delhi focused on confidence-building measures, such as relaxing trade and travel restrictions across a ceasefire line dividing disputed Kashmir.
They are unlikely to make much headway on the thorny territorial issue of Kashmir itself, or on fighting militancy.
"We come here with a positive outlook, we feel that the relationship between the two countries should not be held hostage by the past that the two countries have faced," Khar, Pakistan's first female and youngest-ever foreign minister, said in her opening remarks, standing next to Krishna.
The United States has also stepped up efforts to bridge the divide between the neighbours. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited New Delhi last week and urged them to work on ties as well as stabilising the volatile region.
The countries have fought three full-scale wars since winning independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.
India and Pakistan in February resumed a formal peace process broken off after the 2008 attack on financial capital Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, which killed 166 people.
As in previous peace efforts, progress has been slow and vulnerable to any attempts by Pakistan-based militants, fighting for a Muslim Kashmir, to try to trigger a war by launching another Mumbai-style attack.
But both sides kept their cool in the aftermath of a triple bomb attack in Mumbai this month that killed 24 people and injured more than 130. Police have yet to identify the suspects but security analysts suspect the home-grown Indian Mujahideen.
In the past, the success of talks has often come down to personalities. Last year a news conference by then-Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Krishna descended into a public tit-for-tat spat.
Attention will this time fall on how Khar, only appointed last week, manages her highest-profile foreign trip yet and Krishna, often criticised for lacking diplomatic clout.
PROXY WAR?
Peace across the heavily militarised frontier between India and Pakistan is crucial for the United States to draw-down troops and stabilise Afghanistan without sparking off a proxy war between New Delhi and Islamabad in that country.
U.S. plans to start pulling troops out of Afghanistan, a country both India and Pakistan have long competed over for influence, add a fresh challenge to an already volatile, yet strategic region.
"It is the interest of peace not only for our two countries but the entire region and beyond. Perhaps we owe this to ourselves as well as to the succeeding generations to both the Indians and Pakistanis," Krishna said.
A sense of goodwill is apparent, although it is too early to say whether that will last given the mutual distrust and domestic issues which have often abruptly halted any progress.
Pakistan is keen to move forward on discussing the disputed territory of Kashmir, while India wants its neighbour to bring to justice suspects not just behind 2008 Mumbai attacks, but also a number of other attacks against India.
But efforts to focus on less contentious issues may be the best way to steadily reduce distrust, say diplomats.
(Additional reporting by Annie Banerji and C.J. Kuncheria in NEW DELHI; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
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