NEW DELHI: In an improvisation of Ian Fleming’s script, the leaders of India and Pakistan will shake hands in Russia this month, easing a debilitating standoff rooted in the terror attack in Mumbai in November last year, but there is no structured agenda for the widely watched talks that could flow from the gesture, it was officially announced here on Friday.

According to the announcement, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet President Asif Ali Zardari on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on June 16.

‘They will be at the same place at the same time. They will meet, they will shake hands,’ Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters. ‘I don’t want to guess what they will discuss,’ he said.

Dr Singh will travel to Yekaterinburg on June 15 for a three-day visit during which he will attend the six-nation SCO and the Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC) Summit.

President Zardari will be in Yekaterinburg for the SCO meeting as Pakistan, like India, is an observer in the grouping.

About the likely resumption of dialogue with Pakistan following a nudge by Washington, Mr Menon said: ‘I think we have also said that we would like to but it is necessary that before that we see certain steps being taken and that we need an atmosphere in which the dialogue can actually take place and for that we made quite clear what we think is necessary.’

He recalled Dr Singh’s statement in parliament earlier this week where he had said that India would meet the Pakistani leadership ‘more than half the way on the road to peace’ if action is taken by Islamabad against terrorism. ‘There can be no more authoritative statement than what the prime minister said,’ Mr Menon said.

Despite their aloofness, ‘we are in constant touch with each other — that is India and Pakistan. We have high commissioners there and here. We have established channels of communicating with each other,’ Mr Menon said.

‘I am sure we both watch each other’s statements carefully. In the last few days, you had a series of public authoritative statements from the government of India, from the leadership at the highest level. We have seen Pakistani statements as well.’

Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna told a private TV channel that New Delhi had yet to hear about Pakistan’s plan to appeal against the recent release of Hafiz Saeed, chief of Jamaatud Dawa, whose role it suspects as a key plotter in the Mumbai attack.