India, Pakistan tensions remain

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NEW DELHI, July 19 (UPI) -- India and Pakistan plan to play cricket in India this year, although tensions still simmer over the 2008 terror attack in India's financial center of Mumbai.

The cricket announcement this week came hours after Pakistan said it would not accept evidence presented by India implicating some Pakistanis in the deadly Mumbai attack, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Such a two-steps-forward, one-step-back approach has characterized the nature of the peace talks between the two neighboring nuclear powers, the newspaper said.

The three-day long Mumbai attacks by 10 men, who arrived in the port city by boat, further strained relations between the two countries but efforts have continued to mend them. India has claimed the attacks, in which 166 people died, were launched by groups based in Pakistan.

The peace efforts since then have not resulted in concrete agreement so far, the report said, citing analysts.

"There are too many rocks, too many hard places," Shaukat Qadir, a Pakistani security analyst, told the Times. "There are numerous goodwill gestures, and those are important I guess. But goodwill is useless unless someone in the administrations is willing to back it up."

Indian analyst Dipankar Banerjee said some of the goodwill measures have seemed to fall flat and called that "a pretty good indicator of the state of relations."

Among other major irritants is Kashmir, claimed by both countries. The two countries have fought three wars since 1947.

Analysts said after more than six decades of distrust, three wars and an arms race, there's very little trust and many entrenched political, military and social interests lined up against real rapprochement.