BF2S Forums India and Pakistan Agree to Fight Terror Together

The prime ministers of India and Pakistan agreed to cooperate on fighting terrorism and continue talking to each other after the most substantive meeting between leaders of the two countries since the attacks on Mumbai, India, by Pakistan-based militants last year.

Pakistan’s prime minister pledged to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice, and the two countries agreed to share real-time intelligence on terrorist threats with India, according to a joint statement released by the prime ministers.

Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister, met with Manmohan Singh, his Indian counterpart, in Egypt on Thursday on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit meeting in Sharm el-Sheik.

Both the length of the meeting and the fact that the two sides agreed to release a joint statement hinted at a broader progress to resolve differences between the countries. No mention was made of the thorniest of issues that divide them — the foremost being the disputed region of Kashmir — but the statement nonetheless represented a small but not insignificant breakthrough. Both countries acknowledged that terrorism, rather than each other, was the main threat to each nation.