MOHALI: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday to watch the cricket World Cup semi-final between their rival countries.

The two were seated in the VIP box for the national anthems before heading on to the pitch at the Mohali stadium in northwest India to shake hands with players from both sides.

The last time a top Pakistani leader visited India was in 2001 when the then president military ruler Pervez Musharraf came to India for a landmark summit, which ended in acrimony.

Singh invited Gilani to watch the match with him last week in a move dubbed “cricket diplomacy.”

It is an attempt to warm up relations at a time when the countries are tentatively getting their peace process back on track.

India broke off official contacts with Islamabad in 2008 after the Mumbai attacks, which India blamed on Pakistani militants who wrought carnage in the city over three days, killing 166 people.

Home secretaries from both countries held two days of talks on Monday and Tuesday and agreed to set up a “terror hotline.” They also agreed to allow commissions to visit each other to probe the Mumbai attacks.

In a further goodwill gesture this week, President Asif Ali Zardari agreed Sunday to free an Indian national who was jailed for life more than 23 years ago.

The international community has been pushing the two countries back to the negotiating table to help ease tensions in a volatile region.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, but cricket has been used by politicians from both sides to dissipate tension in nuclear-armed South Asia.

In 1987, then Pakistani president General Ziaul Haq travelled to India to watch a Test match between the two sides in Jaipur at a time when both countries were massing troops at the border.

In 2004, the Indian team went on a “peace tour” of Pakistan, their first trip to the country in 14 years.