Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who last met a year ago at the United Nations, will meet today at the sideline of the Non-Aligned Movement summit that began in Havana yesterday. With both under political pressure at home, expectations are modest, the officials said.

The talks between the nuclear-armed neighbours in Havana, follow a summer of accusations and cancelled meetings following the July 11 train bombings that killed 186 people in Mumbai.

Singh this week lamented "a problem of trust deficit between our two countries" and US and Indian analysts predict few breakthroughs.

"Neither in India nor in Pakistan is there real pressure to achieve the kind of results that might be achievable or to make the kind of dramatic policy changes that would be needed," said Teresita Schaffer, a South Asia expert at Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

The India-Pakistan peace process, launched in 2004 after the rivals came to the brink of a fourth war, will not revive "unless it gets a personal infusion of energy from the two leaders," the former US diplomat said.

A key measure of progress would be whether the two leaders agree to revive formal diplomatic negotiations, which India called off after accusing the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of carrying out the Mumbai attacks.

Indian officials said Singh would be looking for assurances from Musharraf to crack down on groups like Lashkar.

Musharraf also faces US pressure to rein in Islamic militants on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Analysts said he would be hard-pressed to offer new concessions on the disputed border region of Kashmir, since India had failed to respond to his earlier initiatives.

"In Pakistan, the feeling is that Musharraf went out on a limb, and the Indians did not join him," said Marvin Weinbaum, a senior scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

Pakistan wants India to enter into serious negotiations about the long-term future of Kashmir. It believes "it is India's responsibility, since it has most of the cards, to play those cards," the retired intelligence official said.

Despite the modest expectations, Schaffer said the meeting could at least contain conflict in South Asia, where growing violence in Afghanistan, renewed warfare in Sri Lanka and tensions in Nepal have add to regional instability.

"The ceasefire, with rare exceptions, has held, and the leaders in both India and Pakistan want it to continue, or at least, they don't want it to die," Schaffer said.

Leaders from more than 55 developing countries yesterday started two days of talks in Havana without Cuba's communist strongman Fidel Castro, who had not sufficiently recovered from surgery to attend the summit.

"Doctors insisted that he continues his rest," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said at the opening of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, adding that Castro's brother Raul would represent Cuba at the gathering.

Raul Castro, 75, officially heads Cuba while his brother recovers from gastrointestinal surgery he underwent in July.

Fidel Castro, 80, did meet some of the dignitaries who arrived in the capital for the summit, and Cuban media showed pictures of a pajama-clad Castro chatting with his Venezuelan ally Hugo Chavez in a hospital-like room. He also received UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a guest at the summit.

Raul Castro welcomed the heads of state and government as they arrived at Havana's Convention Palace for two days of talks on a wide variety of issues ranging from terrorism to slavery.

The 118-state NAM was expected to adopt a declaration backing Iran in its nuclear program dispute and lash out at Israel for its military interventions in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

A draft document finetuned during four days of preparatory meetings also called for United Nations reform and stressed the need for increased cooperation among developing countries in order to counter overwhelming US influence.

The summit brings together several US allies, but also its fiercest foes such as Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Belarus, a country Washington has called Europe's last dictatorship.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already drawn strong support at the NAM, at a time when the United States is pushing for sanctions to punish Tehran for its refusal to stop enriching uranium. Iran insists its nuclear program has peaceful means, but Washington suspects it is planning to build atomic weapons.