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India, Pak to discuss Kashmir in May

Security experts from India and Pakistan are to meet next month to find ways to build confidence between the two sides, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz has said.

''The main purpose. . . is to agree on security concepts and nuclear doctrines,'' Aziz told the media yesterday.

Aziz met Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh last week in Sri Lanka during the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation foreign ministers meeting during which they set the agenda for future meetings at various levels. The first will be the meeting of security experts.

Aziz said the two sides have set a schedule of meetings to 'intensify' their dialogue, in keeping with a declaration signed by the prime ministers of India and Pakistan in February in Lahore.

Aziz said the foreign secretaries of the two countries would meet in New Delhi in May to discuss Kashmir.

''Any efforts to normalise relations between India and Pakistan without resolving the Kashmir issue are not likely to go very far,'' he said.

''Pakistan is pursuing in good faith various confidence-building measures,'' he said. ''But progress will be difficult to sustain or even justify, if there is no progress on the substantive issue of Kashmir.''

UNI

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