ISLAMABAD, Sept 9: President Gen Pervez Musharraf's close confidant and Secretary of National Security Council Tariq Aziz will meet his Indian counterpart J.N. Dixit in New Delhi this week to prepare for the President's first meeting with Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in New York later this month, it is learnt.

President Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are scheduled to hold talks on Sept 22 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session. Lack of progress on the key issue of Jammu and Kashmir during the recently concluded foreign ministers' talks in Delhi is also said to have prompted the Aziz-Dixit meeting, sources told Dawn.

According to informed sources the government of Pakistan is keen that some substantive development flows from the first meeting between President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Singh.

There is little to show for what the Jan 6 onwards dialogue process has yielded on Kashmir, critics say. During the recent foreign ministers level talks virtually no progress was made on Kashmir.

In fact some of senior Indian officials appeared unrelenting on Kashmir, sources told Dawn. Some reportedly insisted that it was an integral part of India. However, India's National Security Advisor J.N. Dixit is said to have spoken about the need to think beyond established positions on Kashmir and on the need to deal with human rights violations in occupied Kashmir.

He also acknowledged the recent reduction in infiltration in Kashmir. Against this backdrop, Aziz-Dixit meeting is expected to explore and identify ways in which the New York talks between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Singh may yield some specific movement on the Kashmir issue. For instance an announcement of reduction in Indian troops could be such a move.

This will be the third Aziz-Dixit meeting since the change of government in India. Their first meeting took place in Amritsar and the second in Dubai. There were two specific developments on Kashmir during the talks.

One, India agreed to hold the stalled Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service meeting to discuss all issues relating to the proposed bus link. However, it has still not given any dates. The bus talks have been postponed twice on the request of India.

The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus link is seen by many observers as an important and immediate test of the flexibility of the two sides on their Šrespective positions on Kashmir.

The starting of Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service was proposed by India last year as a confidence-building measure on Kashmir. But, there is a deadlock over what documents the Kashmiris from both sides will use to cross the Line of Control (LoC).

Pakistan maintains that the LoC should be crossed by travellers from both sides using state documents, a practice followed in the fifties. India, meanwhile wants travellers to use passports to cross the LoC.

Another Kashmir-related development in the Delhi talks was that India did not agree to Pakistan's proposal of appointing two envoys to discuss the specific issue of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan had apparently proposed that a two-man group be set up to focus exclusively on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir.

India's argument was that such a mechanism already existed, apparently a reference to the Aziz-Dixit track. Interestingly, earlier through the quiet back channel India had proposed that both sides agree to form a small working group to consider possible solutions to the Kashmir dispute. This was conveyed by Mr Dixit through Mr Aziz. However, India had suggested that such a group should work away from the media glare.