India and Pakistan foreign ministers meet

The Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers have begun talks in Islamabad in an effort to revive peace talks that froze after the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Pakistan says all issues are on the table for the meeting between Shah Mehmood Qureshi and India's SM Krishna.

Islamabad is expected to bring up its complaint that India is diverting water from rivers that cross the border.

The talks are the third high-level contact in six months and the foreign ministers' first meeting since 2008.

In February, the two nations' senior foreign ministry officials met in Delhi. Last month, their home ministers met in Islamabad.

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in the Pakistani capital says after the turbulent times between the two nuclear neighbours, these talks will be feted as a success, simply if they do not collapse.

The 2008 Mumbai (Bombay) attacks - which severely damaged relations between the two - are expected to be the focus of the talks.

India blamed the bloodshed - in which Islamist gunmen killed more than 160 people - on Pakistan-based militants. After initial denials, Pakistan later admitted the attacks were partly planned on its soil.

Recent violence in the divided Kashmir region - at the heart of hostility between the neighbours - may also be discussed.

As the two ministers met, news emerged that the second Indian army major in as many days had been killed in a bitter firefight with militants in mountainous forest at Poonch district, Indian-administered Kashmir.

Separatists in the region began an insurgency against Indian rule in 1989 - a movement almost immediately backed by Pakistan - and since then tens of thousands of people have been killed.

Mostly Muslim Kashmir has been the cause of two of three wars between Pakistan and India since independence from Britain in 1947.

After his arrival in Islamabad, Mr Krishna said he was hopeful of a new beginning in relations.

"Pakistan must realise that India harbours no ill-will against it and the cancer of terrorism needs to be rooted out completely," the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency quoted him as telling reporters.

Mr Krishna is also due to meet Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Relations between the two countries, which have fought three wars since the subcontinent was divided in 1947, have been bedevilled by border and resource disputes.