India, Pakistan Will Meet on Nuclear Fears

India and Pakistan decided Wednesday to hold “technical talks” to reassure each other that their nuclear programs are peaceful.

The question has been a major irritant to relations between the neighboring countries, which have fought three wars.

Spokesmen on both sides also said that talks on increasing trade, now minimal, will begin immediately. An Indian official said that ways of sealing the border against unauthorized entry to either country would be explored.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India and President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, here for the U.N. 40th-anniversary session, spent 35 minutes together at Zia’s hotel suite. It was the third time they had met.

Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Niaz A. Naik, said the leaders “agreed to initiate the process of technical discussions . . . on the question of nuclear non-proliferation.”

Both nations say their intentions are peaceful, but India says it has information that Pakistan is developing a nuclear bomb. India became the world’s sixth known nuclear power in May, 1974, when it exploded an underground nuclear device in the Rajasthan desert.

After the U.N. meeting, Gandhi addressed the Council on Foreign Relations. He stressed a desire to improve relations with the United States, which were strained during the tenure of his mother, Indira Gandhi, as prime minister.

“We want America to recognize that it is natural for India to see the world from its own vantage point, but differences in perception should not come in the way of friendship between two democracies,” he said.