NEW DELHI - INDIA'S Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday he wanted to try again to make peace with Pakistan, but stressed Islamabad needed to take 'strong and effective' action to end terrorism. He said if the Pakistani leadership shows 'courage, determination and statesmanship to take the high road to peace, India will meet it more than half the way.'

'I have spoken before also about my vision of a cooperative sub-continent and the vital interest people of the sub-continent have in peace. For this, we must try again to make peace with Pakistan,' he said.

The comments came a day after Mr Singh had a 40-minute meeting with Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari on the sidelines of a regional summit in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, their first face-to-face talks since the deadly Mumbai attacks.

'It is essential that strong and effective steps are taken by Pakistan against the enemies of peace,' Mr Singh told Indian journalists accompanying him on his way back from Russia. 'Pakistan should act against anti-India terror groups with (the) same determination as it was showing in dealing with Taleban,' he added, describing relations with Pakistan as 'under great stress.'

Mr Singh said Mr Zardari had told him that Pakistan was sincere, but had stressed the difficulties his government is facing and had sought 'some time.'

India has blamed last November's Mumbai attacks - which left 166 people dead - on Pakistan-based militants linked to the country's powerful spy service and has frozen the four-year-old peace dialogue with its nuclear-armed neighbour and arch-rival.

New Delhi says the Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) planned and launched the assault, in which 10 gunmen targeted multiple locations in Mumbai during a three-day killing spree. The foreign secretaries of the two nuclear-armed rival countries are scheduled to meet in June, and Mr Singh said he would review developments then.

'Let us wait for the outcome of the meeting of foreign secretaries. Pakistan must act against perpetrators of past attacks on Indian soil including those involved in the massacre in Mumbai, and dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism,' he added.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since partition in 1947, two of them over the divided and disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Mr Singh and Mr Zardari met in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional security body where both India and Pakistan are observers. -- AFP