Natwar Singh will meet his Pakistani counterpart, Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri, on Monday with pacts expected on advance warning of ballistic missile tests and on a hotline between their coast guards, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper said.

"We shouldn't expect major breakthroughs but definitely we'll see some progress," said Jamshed Ayaz, president of the Institute of Regional Studies, an Islamabad-based think-tank.

It will be Singh's second visit to Pakistan since the neighbours launched their peace process early last year after they went to the brink of a fourth war in 2002.

Singh's visit follows a meeting between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York last month that ended without any major announcement or concrete initiatives, as many had expected.

Even before that meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the neighbours exchanged barbs on their long-running dispute over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Both countries claim the region but it remains divided by a ceasefire line, the result of the two countries' first war over the territory soon after independence from Britain in 1947.

Tens of thousands have died in Indian Kashmir since 1989, when a Muslim separatist revolt against Indian rule erupted.

India wants Pakistan to do more to stop militants slipping across the ceasefire line into Indian Kashmir. Pakistan says Indian forces should stop rights abuses in the region.

Despite their fundamental differences over Kashmir, a ceasefire has held there since late 2003 and the two sides have launched a so-called composite dialogue, on a whole range of issues including Kashmir.

While little progress has been made towards a resolution of Kashmir, the two sides have reached agreement in several other areas including the restoration of diplomatic, sports and transport links, as well as on some trade and prisoner exchanges.

But frustration is growing in Pakistan with the lack of movement on Kashmir.

"The whole exercise of the peace process and the so-called composite dialogue has, unfortunately, been centred on peripheral matter and gloating over settling them," Pakistan's the Nation newspaper said in a Sunday editorial.

"We must realise that the idea of composite dialogue has come a cropper and rethink our policy," the newspaper said.

India and Pakistan have gone to war three times, twice over Kashmir.

"Now it's high time for both countries, they have to agree to give some relief to Kashmiris," Ayaz said.

"They're continuously talking about people-to-people contacts, which is a good sign, but both countries have to move forward," he said.

In a sign of the progress the old rivals have made, Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said last week the two sides had agreed on the need to withdraw troops from a disputed Himalayan glacier but both sides say there are problems over verifying positions before a pull-back.

Several thousand soldiers have died on the Siachen Glacier, the world's highest battlefield at 18,000 to 22,000 ft in the mountains of northern Kashmir.

But one avenue of cooperation on energy appears in jeopardy since late last month when India joined the United States in voting to refer old friend Iran's nuclear programme to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions. India has been planning, along with Pakistan, to build a $7 billion gas pipeline overland from Iran across Pakistan.

But analysts say that project could be at risk in the wake of India's vote at the international Atomic Energy Agency's governing board meeting.