Pakistan and India restarted in Islamabad Monday their dialogue process after an over two-year gap, official sources from Pakistani foreign office told Xinhua.

The two sides opened the talks in the morning with Jalil Abbas Jilani, director-general for South Asia of Pakistan's foreign office and Arun Kumar Singh, joint secretary of India's foreign ministry, leading the two teams respectively, said an official source insisting on his anonymity.

Joint secretaries of both sides will thoroughly discuss the proposed agenda in their meetings on Monday and Tuesday before submitting it to the foreign secretaries' meeting on Wednesday.

The three-day meeting process is widely seen as a prelude for sustained peace talks between the two South Asian neighbors.

The two sides have fought three wars, two of which were triggered by the Kashmir dispute. They have been never engaged in a one-on-one dialogue since the end of 2001, when a terror attack on the Indian parliamentary house was blamed on Pakistan for the alleged back-up.

(Xinhua News Agency February 16, 2004)