NEW DELHI, Sept 9: Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh said on Thursday that the dispute over Kashmir was not a nuclear flash point and that there had been progress in recent talks with his Pakistani counterpart.

"The diplomacy provides hope.... Even modest progress deserve respect and we made modest progress," Mr Singh told CNN news channel. Singh met Pakistan's Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri on Sunday and Monday in Delhi and agreed on a series of proposals to boost the nine-month-old peace process.

They made little progress on Kashmir, the issue at the core of their dispute. However, he said Kashmir would not provoke a nuclear conflict between the two rivals. "Our programme is under very responsible hands with the Prime Ministers taking care of it and I think Jammu-Kashmir is not a nuclear flash point," he said.

Mr Singh said the cross-border infiltration of militants, who according to India come across from Pakistan into Kashmir to wage a separatist insurgency that has claimed 40,000 lives since 1989, was a stumbling block. -AFP