India and Pakistan hold their first official talks Thursday since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, raising hopes that the nuclear-armed rivals can put their volatile relationship back on a stable path.

However, the day-long meeting in New Delhi between Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir offers little hope of any real breakthrough, with even the run-up to the talks beset by arguments over the agenda.

Just hours before Bashir arrived in the Indian capital on Wednesday, Indian frontier guards said they had been fired on by Pakistani troops across the border.

But the mere fact that they are sitting down together again marks a step forward -- one that has been especially welcomed by the United States.

Experts say Washington played a key role in nudging the two neighbours back to the table in an effort to keep a lid on South Asian tensions as it presses more troops into its fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"It is good to be back," Bashir told reporters on arrival. "I have come here to bridge the differences (and) I am hopeful of a positive outcome."

India froze all dialogue after the Mumbai attacks 14 months ago in which 10 Islamist gunmen targeted multiple locations in the country's financial capital, killing 166 people.

India blamed the carnage on Pakistan-based militants and said talks could only resume if Islamabad took concrete steps to bring those responsible to justice and cracked down on militant groups on its soil.

Top leaders from both countries have since met several times during regional conferences, but Thursday's meeting marks the first real step towards normalisation.

New Delhi's offer earlier this month to bring the foreign secretaries together took many by surprise, but the government insisted that it did not represent a return to the comprehensive peace process suspended after Mumbai.

Speaking in London on Monday, Rao said her meeting with Bashir was aimed at finding a way back, "in a graduated manner," to a "serious and responsive" dialogue.

"It is our core concerns about terrorism that we find the essential focus for the discussions," Rao said, adding that effective Pakistani action against militant groups remained an "absolute must" if normalisation was to proceed.

Pakistan has balked at the Indian emphasis on terror and made it clear that all issues should be up for discussion, including the seemingly intractable dispute over Muslim-majority Kashmir.

The Himalayan region is held in part by Pakistan and India, but claimed in full by both.

Pakistan wants a "peaceful settlement of all outstanding disputes," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in Beijing on Tuesday.

According to former Indian foreign ministry official K.C. Singh, both sides have been guilty of "dissimulating to satisfy domestic constituencies" as they battle to control the agenda.

"Whether across the table they can harmonise disparate motives seems impossible," said Singh, who headed an India-Pakistan counter-terror task force set up in 2006.

The history of Indo-Pakistan dialogue is a long and patchy one, encompassing every form of contact from back-door diplomacy to prime-ministerial summits.

The only common factor has been the glacial pace of tangible progress in resolving the core disputes between two countries who have fought three wars since independence in 1947 -- two of them over Kashmir.

The most productive round, according to India's former foreign secretary Lalit Mansingh, was the comprehensive peace process -- known as the Composite Dialogue -- that was launched in 2004 and suspended after Mumbai.

"That was remarkable," said Mansingh, listing "tangible dividends" in increased people-to-people contacts, a dip in violence in Kashmir and a pact to reduce the risk of a nuclear arms incident.