NEW DELHI, July 3: Home secretaries of India and Pakistan wound up their widely watched talks on Tuesday, a day short of the two-day schedule because of the Lal Masjid standoff in Islamabad, but both sides said they had made progress since the officials met in May last year.

If the standoff in Islamabad appeared to overshadow the discussions and indeed brought them to an early conclusion, there was cheer for them too. Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil, who completed a two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir last week, was quoted as saying that Pakistan should not be blamed for all of India’s troubles with terrorism.

“We should not blame Pakistan for every wrong thing... increase in infiltration and spurt in violence here (Kashmir),” he told reporters during the visit to Srinagar, significantly on the eve of Tuesday's meeting.

“We are not in the process of blame game. We are trying to understand and complement each other.”

In Delhi, a joint statement is expected to be issued on Wednesday morning after the wide range of discussions between Pakistan’s Home Secretary Syed Kamal Shah and India’s Madhukar Gupta were packed into a single day of detailed negotiations.

Mr Shah was due to return to Islamabad by road late on Tuesday night.

The formal talks covered issues of visa liberalization and consular facilities to prisoners, both of which appeared to have made progress.

There is a proposal hanging fire to allow citizens from each country who are either over 65 years old or below 12 years to be given a visa on arrival, to be begin with, by the air route. It is not known if this has been clinched.The two sides are believed to have set up three sub-groups to go into issues like terrorism and extradition and deportation of wanted criminals from each other's territory, local reports said.

They said these groups would work out the nitty-gritty of establishing better cooperation in areas like countering terrorism, exchange of information on wanted criminals and drug trafficking.

The two sides are also said to have discussed investigations into the last year's July 11 Mumbai commuter train blasts and the attack on the link train of the cross-border train Samjhauta Express in February this year.

At the last home secretary-level talks in Islamabad in May last year, both sides had agreed to release fishermen and civilian prisoners who had completed their prison sentences and have been granted consular access and whose national status has been verified.

Ahead of the talks, India released 40 Pakistani prisoners, including 10 fishermen, as a goodwill gesture.

New Delhi is said to be awaiting the confirmation of the nationality of 48 other fishermen, who would be repatriated immediately after their identity is established.