The leaders of India and Pakistan met Sunday, with both vowing to pursue better relations between the nuclear-armed nations, according to media reports.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke for nearly an hour in New Delhi, with Singh saying he would accept Zardari’s invitation to visit Pakistan by the end of the year.
Billed as private yet still important diplomatically, the meeting marked their first face-to-face meeting since 2009 and the first visit by a Pakistani head of state to India in seven years.
“We would like to have better relations with India. We have spoken on all topics that we could have spoken about and we are hoping to meet on Pakistani soil very soon,”
Zardari told a briefing after the meeting, Reuters reported.
“I would be very happy to visit Pakistan at a mutually convenient date,” Singh said, the Associated Press and Bloomberg reported.
In recent months, India and Pakistan have agreed to increase trade and travel across their frontier in Kashmir, which is divided but claimed in full by both nations.
India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence from British rule in 1947, early last year resumed peace talks broken off by India after the November 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai by Pakistani gunmen in which 166 people died.