The Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan have said they will build on a recent upturn in ties, in a bid to address concern that a tentative peace process may slow down under a new Congress-led coalition in New Delhi.

Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali called his new counterpart Manmohan Singh on Saturday night and the two leaders agreed to carry forward a fragile rapprochement that began last year under India?s former Hindu nationalist-led coalition.

Jamali?s call followed similar conversations by Pakistan?s President Pervez Musharraf with Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the powerful chief of the ruling Congress party, who was invited to visit Islamabad.

Jamali and Singh spoke about the warmth generated by Indian cricket team?s successful tour of Pakistan earlier this year, and said it demonstrated the people?s desire for better ties.

?The two leaders stressed we should respond to the popular will,? an Indian government official said.

But diplomats and analysts say the Congress party which ruled India for most of the first five decades after independence is less likely to make bold moves on the main dispute over Kashmir than its predecessor Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.

Foreign Minister Natwar Singh was quoted as saying confidence building measures with Pakistan will be guided by a bilateral agreement signed in 1972, which has drawn concern in Islamabad that New Delhi may not offer anything new on Kashmir.

The Shimla Pact, signed after the third India-Pakistan war in 1971, was meant to be the basis for negotiations to eventually formalise Kashmir?s division into Indian and Pakistani parts, a position that Islamabad has rejected.

Musharraf last week alluded to Singh?s repeated assertions that the Shimla Pact was the bedrock of ties.

?If he is meaning that there will be no movement or a status quo decision, well, I beg to totally differ with him,? he said.

?....But if he means that we need to address this issue of Kashmir and solve it though dialogue, then yes, we will follow the Shimla agreement,? the Pakistani leader said.

India has long held the whole of Muslim-majority Kashmir to be an integral part of the country and a touchstone of its secular credentials.

Pakistan demands implementation of UN resolutions for a plebiscite to decide whether the Himalayan territory be folded into India or merged with Pakistan.

It has in the past sought international mediation, saying New Delhi was not serious in resolving the dispute at the heart of more than half a century of tensions between the nuclear rivals. A time-table agreed in January provided for the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan to meet in May and June to open substantial talks on Kashmir and nuclear confidence building measures. Dates have not yet been announced.

Confidence building measures with Pakistan will be ?intensified and broadened,? the Hindu newspaper quoted Singh as telling party workers in the western city of Jaipur.

Sanjeev MIGLANI