Pakistan FM plays down meeting with Indian counterpart

MULTAN: Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi Wednesday played down prospects of Islamabad improving ties with New Delhi when he meets his Indian counterpart in New York this month.

"Frankly speaking, I am not expecting any major breakthrough during the meeting" with India's Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, Qureshi told reporters in the central Pakistani city of Multan, his home town.

Qureshi said that he will meet Krishna on the margins of the UN General Assembly session in a bid to improve relations between the nuclear-armed rivals, but that India did not seem enthusiastic about the encounter.

Nevertheless, he added, "I am going with a positive mind for a constructive engagement."

Relations between the south Asian neighbours deteriorated rapidly after last November's terror attacks in Mumbai, which killed 166 people and which New Delhi blamed on the Pakistani-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

India says that the 10 gunmen who reached India by sea and laid siege to Mumbai for 60 hours were Pakistanis.

Last month, Pakistan assured India of providing its "fullest cooperation" in preventing any terror acts after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that militants in Pakistan were plotting new attacks.

Pakistan also denies accusations by India that it has been supporting Islamist militants waging a rebellion in Indian Kashmir that has killed more than 47,000 people since 1989, according to an official tally.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and came dangerously close to a fourth following a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament by militants New Delhi said came from Pakistan.

New Delhi says it will resume talks to normalise ties with Pakistan only after Islamabad brings the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice.