Islamabad: India and Pakistan today (Feb 16, 2004) began three-day talks here to discuss the modalities to kick-start the composite dialogue process to resolve the Kashmir and other issues between themselves.

The talks began at 11:30 hours (IST) at the Pakistan Foreign Office between Joint Secretary in External Affairs Ministry Arun Kumar Singh and Director for South Asia in Pakistan Foreign Office Jalil Abbas Jilani.

The two officials met to finalise the issues, agenda and modalities to resume the composite dialogue process agreed to by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf on January 5 on the sidelines of last month's SAARC Summit.

Singh is assisted by Gitesh Sharma, Counsellor Political at the Indian High Commission here.

The Foreign Secretaries of the two countries would meet here for a day on February 18 to give final touches to modalities for the dialogue process agreed to by both countries.

Foreign Secretary Shashank would arrive here tomorrow to meet his counterpart Riaz Khokhar on Feb 18.

There were strong indications from both India and Pakistan that the scope of the composite dialogue would be expanded with the inclusion of issues like nuclear-related CBMs to prevent accidental firing of nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation and normalisation of trade relations.

"The scope and the size of the composite dialogue would be expanded with inclusion of number of issues concerning nuclear, Defence and other fields depending on the agreement between the two countries," a top Pakistani official said.

Both India and Pakistan have described the present dialogue as "talks for talks". The two countries had identified the eight points for composite dialogue process in 1997.

The 1997 agenda included peace and security, Kashmir, Siachen, Wullar Barrage, Sir Creek, terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial co-operation and friendly exchanges.

The two countries previously agreed for a composite dialogue in June six years ago and worked out a framework for it. At that the two countries agreed that issues relating to peace, security and Kashmir would be discussed at the level of Foreign Secretaries and the rest by top officials of the concerned Ministries.

The two Foreign Secretaries met once subsequently to discuss the Kashmir issue in which they reiterated their stated positions but dialogue failed to take off then due to a series of events culminating in military coup by President Pervez Musharraf.