Gujral, Khan break the ice at first foreign ministers meeting in eight years

India and Pakistan on Wednesday took yet another step towards normalising their relations when their foreign ministers had a ''cordial and confidence-building'' 75-minute meeting after which they announced that their foreign secretaries will meet in Islamabad before the SAARC summit in Male next month.

External Affairs Minister I K Gujral and his Pakistani counterpart Gohar Ayub Khan said the two countries were committed to continuing their dialogue at all levels, to search for solutions to the problems between them.

Khan said his meeting with Gujral had ''broken the ice'' in the relations between the two countries and had paved the way for carrying out a dialogue in the future to cover the entire gamut of Indo-Pak relations.

Asked if there was any discussion on the Kashmir issue, he said the matter would be discussed by the foreign secretaries when they meet in Islamabad. ''Hopefully, the foreign secretaries will meet before the SAARC summit,'' he added.

No date has yet been fixed for the next round of foreign secretary-level talks.

Gujral said the one-to-one meeting was held in a cordial atmosphere. ''It was a very friendly meeting at which we discussed different issues,'' he said.

The foreign ministers meeting came nine days after the foreign secretaries of the two countries -- Salman Haider and Shamshad Ahmed -- concluded their four-day summit.

The talks between the foreign secretaries were overtaken by political developments in India when the Congress withdrew support to the H D Deve Gowda govenrment.

The last meeting between India and Pakistan's foreign ministers took place in 1989 when P V Narasimha Rao was India's external affairs minister and Sahibzada Yaqub Khan was his Pakistani counterpart.