A long-awaited first round of peace talks between Pakistani Taliban insurgents and the government has started in Islamabad after numerous delays and growing doubt over the chance of their success.
The insurgents have been battling since 2007 to topple Pakistan's government and establish strict Islamic rule, but Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif believes both sides are now ready to find a negotiated settlement and stop fighting.
Irfan Siddiqui, a government negotiator picked by Mr Sharif, described the atmosphere as "cordial and friendly".
Several earlier efforts at striking peace deals with the militants failed to end the violence for long, only allowing them to regroup, recruit new fighters and strike back with renewed vengeance.
Pakistan's neighbours are watching closely, acutely aware that another failure to find a peaceful solution could further destabilise the region already nervous ahead of the expected pull-out of most foreign forces from neighbouring Afghanistan.
The meeting was expected to agree on a roadmap for future discussions.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article