Officials from both sides were tight-lipped about the agenda, but Acting Foreign Secretary Touhid Hossain told reporters yesterday that they struck a "positive" note and covered all issues.

India agreed to form a committee to look into giving duty-free access to Bangladeshi goods, in addition to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent announcement of giving duty-free access to some Bangladeshi goods, foreign ministry sources said.

The discussions, led by Touhid and Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon at the state guesthouse Padma, also included the removal of non-tariff and para-tariff barriers between the two countries.

Dhaka and New Delhi are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to remove non-tariff barriers at the end of today's talks. The MoU will standardise quality controls on each side of the border.

Both sides also decided to follow-up on the pledge made at bilateral meetings in April to revive all mechanisms, the first of which were the current foreign secretary-level meetings.

Two such joint mechanisms include the Joint Border Working Group to discuss the troubled border between the two neighbours and the Joint Committee of Experts to demarcate water territory and share common waters.

The last foreign secretary-level talks were held in New Delhi in 2005.