THIMPU, Bhutan, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries met Sunday in Bhutan, seeking to carry forward their dialogue, broken since the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
India's Nirupama Rao and Pakistan's Salman Bashir met in the Himalayan kingdom's capital of Thimpu, which was hosting the conference of the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation.
Rao and Bashir also met to discuss another meeting between the two countries' foreign ministers since their last one in July.
Both India and Pakistan are nuclear weapon countries and relations between the two neighbors have remained strained since the Mumbai terror attacks in which more than 160 died and which India claims were masterminded by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba group.
Following their talks, the two officials said they agreed on the need for a continued dialogue between their countries, the Voice of America reported.
"As we have always said that dialogue between India and Pakistan is necessary and a must if we are to satisfactorily resolve the outstanding issues between our two countries," India's NDTV reported Rao as saying in an earlier statement.
In response, Bashir was quoted as saying the talks were aimed at "preparation of engagement between the two foreign ministers. … My expectations are that we should be working towards continued engagement."
While India claims Pakistan has not made enough progress in fully investigating the Mumbai terror attacks, Pakistan accuses India of not going after Hindu radicals allegedly involved in the Samjhauta border train blast in 2007.
