Senior Indian, Pakistani officials discuss attack in India

Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met the adviser to Pakistan's prime minister on foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Nepal on Thursday, in the first high-level talks between the two countries since an attack on an India army base earlier this year.

Swaraj said a team of Pakistani investigators will arrive in India on March 27 to help probe the attack on the base in Pathankot in India's Punjab state.

The meeting marked a thaw in recent frostiness in bilateral relations since the Jan. 2 attack, in which seven Indian soldiers and six militants died. A group in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir claimed responsibility.

Since independence from Britain in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir, the Himalayan region that both claim in its entirety.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training insurgents fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies. More than 68,000 people have been killed in the violence, which began in 1989.

Foreign ministers and top diplomats from eight South Asian nations met in the resort town of Pokhara in west Nepal.

Aziz said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, are expected to meet in Washington on March 31. Aziz also gave an invitation for Modi to attend a summit of South Asian leaders in November in Pakistan.