NEW DELHI, July 16 -- India and Pakistan agreed Thursday to increase communication and information-sharing in an effort to prevent future terrorist attacks, and said dialogue was the only way forward in the wake of violence such as November's siege in Mumbai.
The leaders of the two countries spoke for almost two hours on the sidelines of the ongoing Non-Aligned Movement summit at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. In a statement afterward, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani agreed to "share real-time, credible and actionable" intelligence information about possible terror plots.
The joint statement represented a break for the bitter blame-game that followed the deadly Mumbai attacks. "Both leaders affirmed their resolve to fight terrorism and cooperate with each other to this end," the statement in said.
Until now, New Delhi had insisted that Pakistan must take "concrete and demonstrable" action on terror as a pre-condition for the resumption of peace talks.
However, the text of the jointly agreed statement on Thursday said that "action on terror should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed" and that "terrorism is the main threat to both countries."
During the talks, Singh reiterated his demand to "bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice," and Gillani assured that Pakistan will do "everything in its power in this regard."
Gillani described the meeting as a "major breakthrough," according to the Press Trust of India.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars against east other. Talks between the two nations broke down in November when 10 gunmen laid a siege for three days to the western Indian city of Mumbai and attacked five-star hotels, train stations and a Jewish prayer center, killing more than 170 people.
New Delhi accused an outlawed Islamist group based in Pakistan, Lashkar-i-Taiba, of engineering the attacks. One of the gunmen, a Pakistani national, is in Indian custody and is undergoing a court trial in Mumbai.
In another step toward cooperation, Singh met Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Russia last month for the first time since November.
On Wednesday, India's foreign secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon, told reporters India has never shied away from holding talks and appeared to place to onus of responsibility for the tension on Pakistan.
"We have a situation where India-Pakistan relations are stressed and they are stressed for certain reasons -- because of terrorist attacks on India from Pakistan," Menon said, according to a transcript from the ministry of external affairs. "So, we need to take that into account to see how we move forward, how we deal with that first."
An Indian official said that India has kept the vexing issue of the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir out of the talks and has narrowed the focus of the talks to the issue of terrorism.
But, in addition to India's concerns about the role of Pakistanis in the Mumbai attacks, Singh conceded to a longtime Pakistani concern about the role of Indian citizens in terrorist incidents in its Baluchistan province.
During Thursday's meeting, the leaders also said a main challenge facing both their nations is poverty and development. The next meeting is scheduled to take place between top foreign officials of both countries during the United Nations General Assembly in September.
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