New Delhi - India offered Thursday to resume high-level peace talks with Pakistan, an overture that reflected a significant warming between the nuclear-armed countries one year after the deadly siege on Mumbai.

The United States has been pressuring both countries to resume talks, which would free up Islamabad to concentrate on its fight against the Taliban militants - a key to U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

India, which blamed the 2008 attacks on Pakistan-based militants, made the offer despite the country's continued insistence that Pakistan has not done enough to rein in Muslim extremists operating in its territory.

Pakistan has been seeking a resumption of the talks for months, but stopped short of accepting the offer.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi called it a "positive step." He noted the talks should resume from where they had been put on hold by India after the Mumbai attacks - a clear reference that Pakistan wants a return to the wide-ranging dialogue the two nations had been holding.

It remained unclear, though, if India would go that far. That dialogue, which covers a broad range of issues and had been intended to lead toward a full normalization of relations, remains a sensitive issue in New Delhi because of continuing suspicions about Islamabad's resolve against terror groups.

However, a serious thaw in India-Pakistan relations could send strategic ripples across the troubled region, with Islamabad shifting its attention away from the border with India and instead focusing - as Washington wants - on its increasingly bloody war with Taliban militants.

P.J. Crowley, spokesman for the State Department, said the U.S. is encouraging dialogue among India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as way to achieve stability.

"We certainly have been encouraging steps that both Pakistan and India could take....," he said, adding the goal was "a more stable region that is focused on both interests that they share and threats that they share."

Pakistan has been escalating its fight with the Taliban in recent months. Pakistan's tribal regions are believed to be the main strongholds of both the Taliban and al-Qaida and are thought to be used as staging grounds for attacks against U.S. forces inside Afghanistan.

American officials have been pressing Pakistan for months to intensify its attacks against the militants.

Easing tensions with India would allow Pakistan to free up troops from India's border - which has been a traditional flashpoint - and move them to the Afghan border.

Three U.S. soldiers training Pakistani soldiers were killed Wednesday as they traveled along the volatile border region.

On Thursday, other than confirming the offer had been made, India gave few indications about the scale of the proposed discussions.

"The issue of counterterrorism will be raised, as well as other issues to contribute to creating an atmosphere of peace and security," the official said on condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of the matter. The talks would be held between foreign secretaries, he said, but did not indicate when the meeting could take place.

In India, analysts said they did not expect a quick resumption of full-fledged talks.

"We cannot live with frozen relations forever," said former Foreign Secretary Lalit Mansingh, adding: "I believe terrorism will be the most important issue to be discussed, and not the composite dialogue that was on the table earlier."

India believes that Pakistan remains, at the very least, a haven for anti-India militants. Some Indian officials also say Pakistani military and intelligence officials offer training and weaponry to terror groups - and might even have helped plan the Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people dead.

Certainly, most Indian officials see Pakistan as unwilling to deal with its own militant issues.

"Pakistani authorities are in denial," said Mansingh.

The Indian offer, though, comes as Pakistan has charged seven suspects with planning and helping execute the Mumbai rampage. The trial has yet to fully begin, with defense lawyers arguing over a series of legal points, including the admissibility of evidence. All but one of the suspects are accused of being members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based group that India says was behind the attack.

India is currently trying the only gunman who survived the siege.

The first signs of a thaw in India-Pakistan relations became evident Wednesday when New Delhi announced that India's minister for internal security, Palaniappan Chidambaram, would attend a regional meeting in Islamabad later this month.

Chidambaram would be the first high-level official to visit Pakistan since the Mumbai attack, although the two countries' prime ministers have met on the sidelines of international conferences.

The disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is split between India and Pakistan and claimed by both, is at the heart of decades of bitterness between the two countries.

They have fought two wars over control of Kashmir and a dozen insurgent groups, which seek either independence or merger with Pakistan, have been fighting Indian rule there since 1989.

--

Associated Press writer Nirmala George contributed to this report.