In yet another track-II initiative, retired military officials and diplomats, former ministers, strategists and media persons from India and Pakistan will meet in Kathmandu on Friday.
"The conclave is part of atmosphere-building without which confidence-building measures like the one proposed by the political leadership of India and Pakistan will not succeed," military analyst General Ashok K Mehta, who is part of the Indian delegation, said.
"It will be an attempt to deconstruct and demystify the reasons which led to the Kargil conflict and the post-Parliament attack troop build-up on both the sides. We will also get a first-hand information about what Pakistani military thought about these developments," he said.
Former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan Satinder Lamba, former foreign secretary M K Rasgotra, Pakistan's former foreign ministers Inam-ul-Haque and Sartaj Aziz, former interior minister Moinuddin Haider, and its former foreign secretary Niaz Naik will be the principle speakers at the conference.
'Military, nuclear dimension and strategic fall out of India-Pak stand off', 'Costs of confrontation', 'Prospects of peace - the way ahead' -- are some of the subjects lined up for the conference organised by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a wing under the German Ministry of Development and Cooperation.
The summary of conclave's recommendations, which will be a roadmap for peace between India and Pakistan, will be submitted to the foreign secretaries of both countries, Mehta said.
The high commissioners of both the countries in Nepal will be special invitees at the two-day conference.
On why the seminar was not organised in either India or Pakistan, Indian representative of FES Kabir Seth said it was owing to 'visa complications' for the participants.
This endeavour comes in the recent visit of a Pakistani lawmakers delegation in May.
