NEW DELHI, Aug 12: The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan will exchange pleasantries but not hold formal talks in Kathmandu next week, their aloofness underscored on Monday by fresh remarks from New Delhi that “cross-border infiltration” had not ceased as yet in Kashmir, news reports and officials said.

“Quite clearly, cross-border terrorism from Pakistan has not ended,” Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying on his return from a three-day visit to Kabul.

“There is no change in this. We had our apprehensions that in the run-up to the elections terrorist groups will step up violence there. We have seen evidence of that,” Sinha told reporters at the Delhi airport. He was responding to a question on the situation in occupied Kashmir.

Sinha, who held talks with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and other senior officials in Kabul and visited Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, said Al Qaeda elements were waiting for opportunities in “certain areas” to regroup.

“Everyone in Afghanistan is aware of this and determined not to allow this to happen,” he said. After his visit to Kandahar, the venue of hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane during the Taliban rule, Sinha said it was a “bad dream”.

PTI said Sinha would come face-to-face with Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Inamul Haq at the Saarc Foreign Minister’s meet starting in Kathmandu on Aug 20.

But there will be no formal meeting between the two, PTI quoted official sources as saying.

PTI said the current state of India-Pakistan tensions may come up for discussion during the meeting. It said: “There is also speculation about a meeting between Sinha and Haq on the margins of the Saarc meeting.” It added though that official sources categorically ruled out any formal, substantive meeting between the two.

It said: “The courtesies expected during such meetings would be observed.”