Thimphu:
The 90-minute meeting that ended late last night in Bhutan led to an air of cautious optimism this morning in Bhutan.
The Indian and Pakistani Foreign Secretaries are in Thimphu to attend the SAARC Foreign Secretaries' meeting. They stressed that the talks they shared on Sunday are a healthy step forward in resuscitating bilateral talks. India has proposed starting with less contentious issues - like reviving cross-border trade, people-to-people contact, and Sir Creek - a strip of water disputed between India and Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch marshlands. The creek, which opens up into the Arabian Sea, separates India's Gujarat from Pakistan's Sindh province.
"We have to wait for this process to mature and we should be optimistic...and cautiously optimistic...because there are many issues that need to be resolved between our two countries, as the nature of the relationship has been very complex," said Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao.
Her counterpart, Salman Bashir, offered a softening of Pakistan's recent stand on the investigation into the Samjhauta Express blasts - after the Pakistani government accused India over the weekend of lacking "the courage to unearth the culpability of Hindu extremists," Mr Bashir said, "It's wrong to sort of connote terror with any denomination. That's my personal view - whether it is Hindu or anything. That is not fair so therefore we have got to have clarity when we define these issues."
68 people were killed on a train headed from Delhi to Lahore in February, 2007. After attributing the terror strike to Pakistani groups, Swami Aseemanand, arrested in November in India, has claimed that he along with other right-wing Hindu activists, planned and executed the blasts on the train when it was passing through Haryana.
Hours before the scheduled meeting of the Foreign Secretaries, Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit made a provocative statement that referred to Hindu extremists, he also said that India's investigation on the Samjhauta blasts "doesn't inspire much hope."
India attributed those comments to Pakistan's attempt to deflect attention from the lack of progress in its investigations into the 26/11 attacks against Mumbai.
The two Foreign Secretaries will now report back to their governments, and dates are expected to be finalised for the Pakistani Foreign Minister's visit to India.