By Palash Kumar

NEW DELHI, July 3 (Reuters) - India will ask Pakistan to step up cooperation in combatting terrorism, officials said, as the neighbours began the latest round of security talks on Tuesday.

The two-day talks between the top home (interior) ministry bureaucrats come during an increase in militant incursions into India's part of Kashmir.

"The Indian side will raise security concerns and urge the Pakistani side to widen cooperation in combating the menace of terrorism," an Indian statement said.

The talks are the first in a little over a year and are part of a larger peace process, launched after the neighbours came close to the brink of a fourth war in 2002.

No major breakthroughs are expected. Progress has been glacial during the past year, with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's domestic political troubles diverting attention, Indian officials said.

An understanding was expected to be reached on the early signing of a pact between the drug control agencies to create an agency for regular cooperation, it said.

Indian officials say there has been an increase in attempts by separatist Islamist militants to infiltrate into Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani side despite promises by Islamabad to curb such incursions.

"OPEN, POSITIVE MIND"

There has also been a seasonal spike in separatist violence in Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region which is at the heart of the rivalry between the neighbours.

Historically, the number of militants crossing into Indian Kashmir rises during summer after the melting of winter snows clears mountain passes.

Indian security officials blame Pakistan-based militant groups for what they say are plots to launch attacks across India, adding that a joint counter-terrorism panel set up last year had made little progress.

Islamabad says it has done all it could to curb anti-India militants and that cross-border infiltration and attacks across India will cease only with a final resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

The home secretaries last met in Islamabad in May 2006 and exchanged a list of wanted criminals. India handed over the names of 38 people, including the heads of Pakistan-based Islamist militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.

Pakistan gave a list of 58 people it says are hiding in India. But there has been no progress on this issue, either.

Pakistan's Interior Secretary, Syed Kamal Shah, said his team had come to India with "a very open and a positive mind".

"We are vehemently opposed to terrorism, we condemn it in all forms and manifestations," he told Reuters after he arrived in New Delhi late on Monday.

"I feel that we can make good progress on drug trafficking, we can make good progress on the exchange of civil prisoners."

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