The leaders of India and Pakistan are to meet Thursday in a major thawing of relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours that could help Islamabad put greater emphasis on the Islamic extremists on its western border who threaten international forces in Afghanistan.

The move, which analysts believe comes under U.S. pressure, is timed just ahead of the arrival of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in India. Optimists hope that the meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, and his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, on the sidelines of a conference of developing nations in Egypt, could result in an agreement to begin to talk again, or at least a deal to work toward the resumption of dialogue.

The meeting itself is a big step forward, but given India's continuing concerns about terrorism emanating from Pakistan, it will be difficult for the get-together to immediately progress to addressing the substance of the countries' quarrels.

Relations between India and Pakistan collapsed after militants from Pakistan attacked Mumbai landmarks in November of last year, killing 166 people. A four-year “composite dialogue” between the two countries, aimed at resolving disputes and normalizing ties, was abruptly ended.

Pakistani officials, however, dampened expectations Wednesday.

“I think much more work needs to be done,” Salman Bashir, Pakistan's top bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Egypt.

The West believes that an easing of tensions on Pakistan's eastern border with India would allow Islamabad to concentrate on the lawless tribal territory used by the Taliban and al-Qaeda on its western border with Afghanistan.

“India, as a result of pressure by the Americans, is hopefully seeing the logic of not stiff-arming us, which only plays into the hands of those who went [to Mumbai] to kill,” said Zafar Hilaly, a retired Pakistan diplomat. “There has to be an announcement that dialogue will be resumed or it will be a failure.”

But the dark shadow of the Mumbai attacks hangs over Indo-Pakistan relations, with New Delhi accusing Pakistan of failing to seriously go after the planners of the attack and the wider “terrorist infrastructure” on its soil.

The attacks brought the two countries to the verge of war. Pakistan subsequently launched two separate prosecutions of members of the extremist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, accused of being behind the assault. In a crackdown that went further than Pakistan had before, it also seized land, bank accounts and facilities belonging to the group, but it has not satisfied India.

“The infrastructure of terrorism must be dismantled and there should be no safe haven for terrorists because they do not represent any cause, group or religion,” Mr. Singh said in his speech yesterday to the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement meeting in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. “Terrorists and those who aid and abet them must be brought to justice.”

Progress in the court cases in Pakistan now holds the key to unfreezing Islamabad-New Delhi ties. Those prosecutions, however, have been characterized by legal bungling and opaqueness.

“It boils down to the question of Lashkar. There is no confidence that Pakistan is willing to act against them,” said Suba Chandran, deputy director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, an independent think tank in Delhi. “[Pakistan] can't have a pistol to our head and say ‘you better talk to us.'”

India aspires to be a global power and a price for that status is settling its disputes with its neighbours, Mr. Chandran said. The core of the hostilities between India and Pakistan, which have been to war three times, is a dispute over control of Jammu and Kashmir, a picturesque region set in the Himalaya mountains. New Delhi believes that Lashkar-e-Taiba was a creation of the Pakistani military as a way of pressuring it over Kashmir. Pakistan says it has turned its back on jihadist groups that it previously tolerated.

“We believe durable peace in South Asia is achievable. It will be facilitated by the resolution of all standing disputes, including Jammu and Kashmir,” Pakistan's Mr. Gilani told the summit in Egypt. “The peace dividend for 1.5 billion people in the region would be enormous.”

Under Pakistan's previous regime, led by military ruler Pervez Musharraf, backchannel diplomacy with India had led to detailed draft agreements on most big disputes, including Kashmir, but New Delhi had hesitated to sign off on them before Mr. Musharraf lost power last year. It is widely feared that another major terrorist attack in India, carried out by militants based in Pakistan, is inevitable, which would sink the chances of peace.