NEW DELHI -- At the conclusion of their midlevel official talks in Islamabad on Feb. 16-18, India and Pakistan outlined an aggressive timetable for wide-ranging peace talks on Kashmir, nuclear safeguards, terrorism and other topics leading up to talks between the two foreign secretaries in May or June and between the foreign ministers in August. Negotiations will start in earnest after India's general elections tipped for late April and early May.
Meanwhile, U.S. President George W. Bush's seven-point nonproliferation agenda got a cautious welcome from India. Delhi agreed on the unsatisfactory state of the present nonproliferation regime, endorsed the principle of effective nonproliferation and called for consultations on the Bush initiative. But concrete cooperation will have to wait until some basic issues are clarified by Washington.
The international community is struggling to come to terms with the spate of recent revelations and confessions regarding proliferation activities by a number of countries that are signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. One difficulty is the status of the three countries outside the NPT that are known or believed to be de facto nuclear powers: Israel, Pakistan and India.