First India-Pakistan Talks Since Mumbai Attacks

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Feb. 25, 2010— -- India and Pakistan's top diplomats met today for the nuclear neighbor's first formal talks since the Mumbai terror attack more than a year ago, a preliminary summit that resumed a basic dialogue but did not accomplish anything substantive.

As expected the two countries brought two different agendas to the New Delhi meeting, with India focusing almost exclusively on terrorism and Pakistan looking for a wider dialogue that includes the disputed territory of Kashmir.

U.S. officials have encouraged India -- the somewhat less willing partner in this new dialogue -- to come to the table, hoping a thaw on Pakistan's eastern border would allow Pakistan's overstretched army to focus on Taliban safe havens near the Afghan border. The U.S. says it needs Pakistan to crack down on Taliban groups that use Pakistan as a safe haven if the U.S. surge in Afghanistan is going to be successful.

But the terrorism that India is most worried about involves a jihadi group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which even Pakistan admits was responsible for the Mumbai attacks. The United States recently declared that Lashkar-e-Taiba was expanding its operations to include targets in Europe.

Indian officials accused Pakistan of failing to crack down on the group, pointing out that immediately after these talks were first discussed, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the supposed charity arm behind Lashkar-e-Taiba, reemerged in public.

The group sent out its first press releases in almost a year and held multiple rallies to mark a Pakistani holiday that celebrates solidarity with Muslim Kashmiris. Indian officials accuse Pakistan of unleashing the group into the public as a way to send a message to India that cross-border attacks -- which India says are state-sponsored -- were still possible.

One of those rallies was led by Hafiz Saeed, the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the accused mastermind of the Mumbai attacks. He also sat for a recent interview with al Jazeera.