First India-Pakistan Talks Since Mumbai Attacks

India and Pakistan's top diplomats met today for the nuclear neighbor's first formal talks since the Mumbai terror attack more than a year ago, a preliminary summit that resumed a basic dialogue but did not accomplish anything substantive.

Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, left, shakes hand with her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir before the start of a delegation level meeting, in New Delhi, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010. India and Pakistan held high-level peace talks Thursday for the first time since the 2008 Mumbai attacks in an effort to rebuild confidence and reduce tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.
(Manish Swarup/AP Photo)As expected the two countries brought two different agendas to the New Delhi meeting, with India focusing almost exclusively on terrorism and Pakistan looking for a wider dialogue that includes the disputed territory of Kashmir.

U.S. officials have encouraged India -- the somewhat less willing partner in this new dialogue -- to come to the table, hoping a thaw on Pakistan's eastern border would allow Pakistan's overstretched army to focus on Taliban safe havens near the Afghan border. The U.S. says it needs Pakistan to crack down on Taliban groups that use Pakistan as a safe haven if the U.S. surge in Afghanistan is going to be successful.

But the terrorism that India is most worried about involves a jihadi group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which even Pakistan admits was responsible for the Mumbai attacks. The United States recently declared that Lashkar-e-Taiba was expanding its operations to include targets in Europe.

Indian officials accused Pakistan of failing to crack down on the group, pointing out that immediately after these talks were first discussed, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the supposed charity arm behind Lashkar-e-Taiba, reemerged in public.

The group sent out its first press releases in almost a year and held multiple rallies to mark a Pakistani holiday that celebrates solidarity with Muslim Kashmiris. Indian officials accuse Pakistan of unleashing the group into the public as a way to send a message to India that cross-border attacks -- which India says are state-sponsored -- were still possible.

Pak to buy 14 Chinese fighter jets, 114 more may come

In a major move to boost its air warfare capability, Pakistan is to purchase 36 J-10 fighter aircraft from China in a deal worth more than USD 1.4 billion, with options open for induction of more similar aircraft. China will supply the 36 J-10 fighter jets, enough to equip two squadrons, under a preliminary agreement that could lead to "more sales", a Pakistani official has said. Pakistan might buy "larger numbers" of the multi-role aircraft in the future but has not signed any deal to purchase as many as 150 jets, the official told the Financial Times.

The J-10 or Jian 10 is China's most advanced combat aircraft and is the third generation fighter comparable to American F-16 Fighting Falcons. Islamabad and Beijing are also collaborating to build an advanced fighter -- JF-17 or "Thunder" and the first of these aircraft are expected to roll out by the end of this month, air force chief Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman said recently. China is one of the main arms suppliers of Pakistan and has sold combat jets to it for over three decades. But Beijing has seldom supplied Pakistan with advanced fighter aircraft like the J-10. Pakistan bought Mirage jets from France in the 1970s and F-16s from the US in the 1980s.

Pakistan has a fleet of 45 F-16s that have been used to some degree in anti militancy operations in Swat and South Waziristan, defence experts said. The US recently agreed to sell Pakistan another 18 new F-16s and officials also expect the Americans to supply about a dozen used aircraft. The Pakistan Air Force plans to acquire at least 250 JF-17s over the next four to five years, which would become its future mainstay. Defence experts have described Pakistan's agreement with China to buy the J-10 jets as a "landmark event" in the defence relationship between the two countries.

"This agreement should not simply be seen in the narrow context of Pakistan's relations with China," said Abdul Qayyum, a retired Pakistani general. "There is a wider dimension. By sharing its advanced technology with Pakistan, China is... also saying to the world that its defence capability is growing rapidly," he said.