During their 75-minute breakfast meeting, the two leaders also discussed the proposed bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Emerging from the talks, both the leaders told reporters that they have decided to meet again on September 5 and 6 to carry forward the dialogue process.

Singh said the issue of cross border terrorism also came up during their parleys.

This was their third bilateral meeting in two months. They had met in the Chinese city of Quingdao in June and earlier this month in Jakarta.

Natwar Singh, on his first visit to Pakistan as foreign minister, and his counterpart Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri were expected to touch on the 56-year-old territorial dispute over Kashmir, the thorny issue at the heart of their rivalry and the cause of two of their three wars, and to review the progress of resumed dialogue.

Dialogue between Pakistan and India was reborn after a 30-month hiatus at an earlier regional summit in Islamabad in July, when President Pervez Musharraf and then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee struck a landmark agreement to restart talks on all issues including Kashmir.

Since then the South Asian foes have held two rounds of talks on peace and security, including confidence-building measures and Kashmir.

Those talks resulted in a joint pledge to "continue the sustained and serious dialogue to find a peaceful, negotiated final settlement" of the Kashmir dispute.

Singh vowed on his arrival in Islamabad Monday to "take the peace process further," saying he had brought with him "a message of goodwill" from the Indian government.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat told the opening of the regional summit Tuesday that his government was committed to making peace with India.

"Pakistan has under the leadership of President Musharraf embarked on making meaningful efforts to overcome all differences and disputes with India including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir," he said.

A spokesman for the Indian High Commission in Islamabad said Singh, a former envoy to Pakistan, was paying a "courtesy call" on Kasuri.

"It is a courtesy call on the sidelines of the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit by the foreign minister of India on the foreign minister of Pakistan," the spokesman told AFP.

The two sides' foreign secretaries met on Monday to lay the ground for the ministers' talks. They discussed progress in confidence-building measures and a proposed bus service between their respective zones in Kashmir, Pakistan's foreign secretary Riaz Kokhar said.

Six other rounds of talks have been scheduled from July 28, starting with two days of talks in Islamabad on a controversial dam on the Jhelum river, which is sourced in Indian-ruled Kashmir but feeds Pakistan.

Three rounds of talks are slated for the first week of August in New Delhi, followed by talks on terrorism and drug trafficking in Islamabad August 10 to 11 and economic talks on August 11-12.

Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan and claimed in full by both, caused two of their three wars and nearly triggered a fourth conflict in 2002.

Relations began to thaw in April last year after Vajpayee's offer of dialogue and both countries embarked on reciprocal confidence building measures.