ISLAMABAD, Jan 4: Pakistan said on Sunday that President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee would meet on Monday to cap a series of bilateral contacts that could help resume a deadlocked "composite dialogue" between the two countries.

Mr Vajpayee made a courtesy call on Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali on Sunday immediately after the opening session of the 12th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) and also requested for a meeting with President Musharraf, spokesmen for the two sides said.

Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, who also held his own meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, was the first to tell reporters that Mr Vajpayee had requested for a courtesy call on the Pakistani president, and said that if the move materialised the meeting would be held on Monday.

Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan, speaking at a news briefing later, confirmed the Indian minister's statement, and said: "The meeting will take place tomorrow (Monday)." But he did not call the planned meeting as a courtesy call, as said by Mr Sinha, and declined to give its agenda or say whether the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir would come up.

"Let us wait for the meeting to take place and let us not speculate about the agenda," he said about what could be the first formal meeting between the two leaders since the collapse of their summit in the Indian city of Agra in July 2001.

President Musharraf and Mr Vajpayee had also briefly met at the 11th Saarc summit in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu in January 2002, but the Indian prime minister has been refusing to hold formal talks with Pakistani leaders unless Islamabad stops what New Delhi calls "cross-border" terrorism in Kashmir.

But tensions between the two sides has somewhat eased in recent months after a standoff following a deadly attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

The Pakistani spokesman said the meeting between prime ministers Jamali and Vajpayee along with their aides was held in "a warm and friendly atmosphere".

The two leaders also met separately for "some time" and "agreed that the momentum in bilateral relations should be maintained," the spokesman said.

Mr Sinha said the two prime ministers met for about half an hour, half of which was without aides.

The meeting was also attended, from the Indian side, by External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, Foreign Secretary Shashank and High Commissioner to Islamabad Shivshankar Menon, and from Pakistani side by Foreign Minister Mehmood Ali Kasuri, Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar and High Commissioner to New Delhi Aziz Ahmed Khan. Some other senior officials from both sides also attended the meeting, he said.

When Mr Sinha paid a courtesy call on Mr Kasuri, the two men "expressed satisfaction over the progress of bilateral relations," Mr Khan said. "They discussed various ways for maintaining the momentum in this direction."

Answering a question, the spokesman said Mr Mishra had also been "meeting people here" but he would not specify with whom. "He is meeting at one level," the spokesman said, and added: "It has significance."

Mr Khan called the latest contacts between India and Pakistan "a good beginning", and said: "We hope it will culminate in a dialogue. These high-level meetings create a new ambience."

He said Pakistan wanted to engage India in a "composite and comprehensive dialogue" to settle all disputes, including Kashmir.

About the Saarc summit, the spokesman said the deliberations of the heads of state or government were continuing and "we hope that their consultations would culminate in historic, forward-looking decisions."