India and Pakistan are set to resume talks, but South Asia's bickering neighbours are unlikely to make any significant progress in resolving their fundamental differences.
Pakistan's most senior diplomat arrived in the Indian capital, New Delhi, yesterday to resume the fragile dialogue between the two rivals.
Formal talks between Pakistani Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad and his Indian counterpart K. Raghunath will begin today and end on Thursday. They were originally scheduled to start yesterday.
'I am glad that talks are taking place, but there is nothing more to it,' Jyotindra Nath Dixit, a former Indian foreign secretary, said.
Last month's armed clashes in the disputed territory of Kashmir, a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions and the rising level of rhetoric on both sides of the border, have clouded the atmosphere for the foreign-secretary-level talks.
As the two sides sat down to thrash out their differences little remained of the initial euphoria that surrounded the resumption of bilateral talks last March after a three-year hiatus. Instead, India and Pakistan appear to have dug deeper into their respective diplomatic trenches, with Islamabad making it clear that Kashmir remains the core issue and India determined to solve other problems first.