Indian PM Narendra Modi and Pakistan PM Nawaz Shariff Meets on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit Friday July 10,2015

 

India and Pakistan have decided to revive the stalled dialogue as Prime Minister Narendra Modi accepted his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif's invitation to visit Pakistan in 2016 for the SAARC summit. 

In their first bilateral talks in over a year, the two leaders met for nearly an hour in Ufa's Congress Hall on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit and decided that National Security Advisers of India and Pakistan, Ajit Doval and Sartaj Aziz, will meet in New Delhi either next month or in September to discuss all issues connected to terrorism. 

The two leaders focused their discussions mainly on terrorism, which India has been projecting as the core issue in Indo-Pakistani relations. 

Modi and Sharif had held bilateral talks in May last year in New Delhi when the Pakistan prime minister came to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the Indian leader

The two leaders came face-to-face in Kathmandu in November last for the SAARC summit but only exchanged pleasantries. 

Foreign secretaries of the two countries were to meet in August last year in Islamabad but the talks were cancelled by India which protested the Pakistani envoy in Delhi meeting Kashmiri separatist leaders ahead of the parleys. 

A decision has also been taken for early meetings of BSF Director General and his counterpart from Pakistan Rangers followed by that of DGMOs. Modi, who accepted Sharif's invitation to visit Pakistan for the SAARC summit in 2016, will be the first Indian Prime Minister in 12 years to travel to that country after the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's historic visit in January 2004. 

The two leaders agreed that India and Pakistan have collective responsibility to ensure peace and promote development. 

A one-page joint statement outlining a five-point roadmap issued after the Modi-Sharif meeting said, both sides agreed to discuss ways and means to expedite the Mumbai case trial (in Pakistan), including additional information like providing voice samples. 

In the joint statement, India and Pakistan also decided to release fishermen in each other's custody, along with their boats, within a period of 15 days, addressing one of the major humanitarian issues between them. 

According to the latest list exchanged by the two sides, there were 355 Indian fishermen languishing in Pakistani jails and 27 Pakistani fishermen lodged in Indian jails. 

The two sides also decided to have a mechanism for facilitating religious tourism