Indian, Pakistani leaders expected to meet on Tuesday

By Oleg Shchedrov
YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - The leaders of India and Pakistan will hold talks in Russia on Tuesday, raising expectations their first meeting since last November's Mumbai attacks will ease tensions between the two countries.
Russian officials said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari would meet on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
But it was unclear whether the two would make any real breakthrough in improving relations, which Washington hopes will ease tensions across the region, including in Afghanistan.
"According to our information a bilateral Indian-Pakistani meeting is tentatively planned for tomorrow," a Russian official involved in organizing the summit said.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the two men would have a one-on-one meeting, but gave few details.
"Let the meeting take place and then we can talk after it is over," he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press of Pakistan. "We can't prejudge the outcome of the meeting."
Pakistan is keen to resume a peace process broken off by India after last November's attacks on Mumbai, blamed by New Delhi on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.
But analysts say that even if Singh and Zardari do manage to break the ice, the two countries are unlikely to be able to pick up where they left off in peace talks.
India is expected instead to focus on trying to persuade Pakistan to take tougher action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba and other militant groups it blames for attacks in Indian Kashmir and on Indian targets elsewhere.
It was incensed when a Pakistani court this month ordered the release from house arrest of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
And while Singh -- who is in a stronger position to manage ties with Islamabad after winning re-election last month -- has said he is ready to meet Pakistan "more than half way," he has also insisted it take tough action against militant groups.
It is not yet clear exactly how he plans to take talks forward with Pakistan, nor whether he would give any indication of this after meeting Zardari in Yekaterinburg.
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars since independence, two of them over Kashmir.
The United States would like Pakistan to move troops from its eastern border with India in order to intensify an offensive on its western border against Taliban militants using Pakistan's tribal areas as a base for launching attacks in Afghanistan.
The two countries are also rivals for influence in Afghanistan, complicating U.S. efforts to improve conditions there and end a military stalemate.
India and Pakistan have observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which groups Russia, China and the former Soviet Central Asian republics.

Source: Reuters