With much of the spadework on secondary issues already done, Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri will sit down in New Delhi on Sunday to discuss the issue at the core of the decades-old dispute -- the former princely state of Kashmir.

The process was set in motion in April last year by then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee when he extended a "hand of friendship" to Pakistan during a visit to the Indian zone of Kashmir.

A few months earlier the two neighbours almost came to war following a bloody attack on India's parliament by gunmen New Delhi claimed were sponsored by Islamabad.

Pakistan denied the charges but the issue of what India terms "cross border terrorism" -- an insurgency in Indian Kashmir by Islamic militants which has claimed at least 40,000 lives in the past 15 years -- continues to rankle and will be Singh's main focus at the talks.

India says the rebels are sponsored by Pakistan but for Islamabad the bloodletting is a result of an indigenous movement started by Kashmiris themselves.

Meanwhile, Indian troops gunned down four suspected Islamic militants along the de facto Kashmir border dividing nuclear-armed India and Pakistan while rebels killed three people and injured 11, police said yesterday.

The renewed violence comes before weekend talks in New Delhi between the foreign ministers of the two nations in a new push to end their decades-old Kashmir dispute.

Police said three of the rebels were shot in the Trikunda sector of southern Rajouri district after crossing into Indian Kashmir, and a fourth in northern Kupwara district. Both areas border Pakistan-administered Kashmir and are favoured infiltration routes.