Press unmoved by Armitage visit

Armitage's visit received much attention from the Indian press

India's leading newspapers are sceptical about the results of the talks in New Delhi between US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and senior Indian officials, including Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The key question they ask is what benefits Mr Armitage was bringing to New Delhi after his talks with the leaders of one of its principal adversaries, Pakistan.

"He [Armitage] probably realized he needed to say something different to Prime Minister Vajpayee today, exactly 11 months after he'd promised on behalf of Pakistan that cross-border infiltration into India would 'permanently' cease," The Indian Express says in its front-page report on the talks.

Evasive

The Indians "listened and smiled politely" as Mr Armitage began the meeting by reciting a few lines from an English translation of Mr Vajpayee's poem Jang nahin hone denge [We won't let war happen].

India has got nothing extra from Mr Armitage's South Asia visit as far as pressing Pakistan is concerned

The Hindu

They wanted to know what Washington was going to do about Pakistan's promise to end "cross-border terrorism" after Mr Armitage was shown new evidence contradicting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's assurances that there were no training camps for militants in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

Mr Armitage, it says, "took notes and nodded vigorously", and Indian officials "got the impression he was trying to distance himself from his own statements and those of President Musharraf a year earlier".

"It is for India to make up her own mind what she thinks about that [Musharraf's] statement," Indian news agency PTI quotes Mr Armitage as saying towards the end of the talks.

Little progress

According to The Hindu, "India has got nothing extra from Mr Armitage's South Asia visit as far as pressing Pakistan is concerned."

The visit "was to a large extent about taking a measure of the situation in South Asia rather than providing answers", The Hindustan Times believes.

Caution is the watchword now

The Hindustan Times

In its account of the talks, The Times of India reports that Indian Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani expressed unhappiness at what he perceived as Washington not exercising sufficient influence on Pakistan on the issue of cross-border infiltration.

"There is no way Pakistan would not accept US diktats as it has done in the case of fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan. Pakistan cannot disregard what you say, as they are dependent on you," Mr Advani is quoted telling Mr Armitage.

'Pantomime'

Most papers agree that major developments in Indo-Pakistan relations are not to be expected.

A commentary in Outlook magazine says that "the peace pantomime" will continue unless both sides become serious about breaking out of the "old pattern" of having talks, sticking to positions and not reaching agreements.

"Caution is the watchword now," The Hindustan Times says.

"A probable reason is wariness about the kind of hype which marked the earlier two attempts at breaking the ice," it explains, referring to the Lahore initiative in 1999 and the Agra talks in 2001.

But the paper says "a lowering of temperature... can be of no little help in creating a conducive atmosphere for a dialogue at the official level, to start with. There is reason, therefore to be moderately hopeful of an improvement in mutual ties".

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.