Singh, Gilani meet briefly in Washington

Even as they avoided a bilateral meeting here on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani today had a brief interaction at a reception organised in connection with the international meet.

Sources said a bilateral meeting between them is expected on the sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit to be held in Bhutan from April 26.

Singh and Gilani shook hands and chatted for about five minutes at a dinner hosted by US President Barack Obama for the leaders gathered for the summit.

It was Gilani who walked up to Singh at the reception, sources said. They met warmly, with smiles on their faces and holding hands momentarily.

They were seen discussing something but the topic was not clear.

They "shook hands and exchanged pleasantries", External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash told reporters without giving details.

Singh and Gilani, who are both here to attend the summit that began today, held bilateral meetings with leaders of a number of countries but not between them.

This is significant since the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries met in February for talks that were aimed at breaking the ice in Indo-Pak relations caused by the Mumbai attacks.

After the February 25 talks, India had expressed willingness to have further rounds of Foreign Secretary-level meetings but there has been no response from Pakistan.

Pakistan has been insisting that the talks should be substantive in the format of Composite Dialogue that was halted by India after the Mumbai attacks. However, India has ruled out resumption of Composite Dialogue till Pakistan takes concrete and transparent action against the perpetrators of 26/11.

Pakistan has taken certain steps to prosecute those behind Mumbai attacks but India is not satisfied.

This was made clear by Singh, who told Obama yesterday that there was "lack of will" on part of Pakistan to act against perpetrators of Mumbai attacks. He underlined that India wanted 'convincing' action against those responsible.