NEW DELHI, Nov 26: Indian media on Friday reacted ambivalently to the visit by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to New Delhi, the first by a Pakistani premier in 13 years , with one side playing down the significance of the talks here because President Gen Pervez Musharraf was not participating, and the other berating the bureaucracy for the absence of progress.

"One should always remember that if Islamabad decides to take some bold initiative to resolve the 56-year-old dispute, it will be President Pervez Musharraf, and not Mr Aziz, who will announce it to the world," The Asian Age said in an editorial.

Commenting on India's quest for the Most Favoured Nation status of Pakistan as a quid pro quo for the Iranian gas pipeline, the Age said: "If India tried to link the pipeline with the MFN, it was only in retaliation to Pakistan's attempt to link the MFN to the resolution of the Kashmir issue."

Mr Aziz's insistence on resolving all outstanding issues "in tandem with the Kashmir issue" did not help matters, The Age said. "But his clarification that President Musharraf's recent proposal on the division and demilitarization of Jammu and Kashmir was meant to generate internal debate, has certainly helped in smoothening ruffled feathers in New Delhi."

The Hindu saw little or no progress in bilateral ties during the visit. "If Wednesday's meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Shaukat Aziz, broke no new ground, it would be unfair to blame the two principals or their aides for this," it wrote.

"So entrenched are the stated positions and approaches of the two countries to their outstanding problems, including Kashmir, and so wide is the 'trust deficit,' that even small shifts can occur only after they have been thoroughly worked on at the official level.

Barely a year into the freshly launched composite dialogue process, neither India nor Pakistan is in a position to change tack. Not yet, at any rate," The Hindu noted.

"Prime Minister Singh emphasized India's red lines - no change in the country's borders and no communal partitioning of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir - but he wisely chose not to spell out any alternative scenario," the Age said.