NEW DELHI, June 19: The hotline between India and Pakistan was revived this morning when Prime Ministers I K Gujral and Nawaz Sharif spoke to each other for a brief five minutes.The two prime ministers noted that the scheduled round of foreign secretary-level talks, which were to begin today, would ``make good progress,'' an official statement from the Ministry of External Affairs said.Prime Minister Gujral ``reaffirmed that India wished to move forward on a broad range of issues in relations with Pakistan,'' the statement added.An agency report from Islamabad said that Sharif, reciprocating the warm sentiments, said Pakistan was committed to resolve all outstanding issues with India, including Kashmir.The revival of the hotline is a confidence-building measure embarked upon by the prime ministers of the two countries at the SAARC summit in Male in mid May. Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar and his team left for Islamabad for talks after the hotline was revived this morning.The revival of the hotline, which once existed between the then prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto, signifies the spirit of peace and mutual trust to which the two leaders were firmly committed, observers said. The Gujral-Sharif discussion on the hotline prior to the foreign secretary-level talks, according to observers, is meant to restate the political directive to the two delegations for a successful outcome of the dialogue.The first round of foreign secretary-level talks in New Delhi from March 28 to 31, revived after a gap of three years, had marked a free and frank exchange of views on all outstanding issues. Both sides had stuck to their respective positions on all issues.Appreciating each other's concerns, the two sides had also expressed their compulsions and the talks could make little headway on the actual agenda of the dialogue.
