India, Pakistan discuss Kashmir border firings

October 14, 2008 - 0:0

NEW DELHI (AFP) -- India's top security officials urged their Pakistani counterparts on Monday to put a stop to ceasefire violations along their shared border in the disputed Kashmir region.

The officials met in the Indian capital on security issues including the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul in July which killed 41 people.
New Delhi blames the bombing, whose victims included two Indian diplomats, on Pakistan's military intelligence agency.
“We will discuss all the issues that concern us,” Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said as Pakistan's National Security Advisor Mahmud Ali Durrani held talks with his Indian counterpart M.K. Narayanan.
“Let us see what we can take forward,” Menon added.
India also claims Pakistan supports an Islamic insurgency in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, the trigger for two of the three wars between the nations since their independence from British rule in 1947.
The Indian military accuses the Pakistani army of providing covering fire to Islamic militants sneaking across the de facto border dividing Kashmir between the two nations.
A gunbattle last month along that border left two Indian soldiers dead.
Pakistan denies the allegations and insists India must back its charges with evidence.
An Indian foreign ministry official said the two officials focused on ways to abide by the ceasefire in Kashmir, put in place a year before the two nuclear weapons-armed rivals launched peace talks in 2004.
The Press Trust of India said Narayanan stressed during the closed-door talks with Durrani ceasefire violations “do not augur well for the ongoing peace process and the composite dialogue process.”
“The two advisors will meet again Tuesday and we hope to achieve some sort of agreement on the (ceasefire) violations because we insist they must stop,” a ministry official who did not want to be named told AFP.
Durrani arrived here Saturday on a five-day visit to India.
The ongoing talks are a follow-up to a meeting between Indian Premier Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York last month.