With a history of hostility and conflict and three wars having been fought in a span of 50 years, confidence-building measures (CBMs) to avert future military and nuclear conflict between archrivals Pakistan and India are a step in the right direction. In the sixth meeting on nuclear CBMs held in Islamabad, the two countries have extended the validity of their previous agreement to reduce the risk of accidents relating to nuclear weapons for another five years. Under this agreement they are not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities and lists of each other’s nuclear installations are regularly exchanged to avoid any incidents. During the talks, Pakistan also proposed to move heavy artillery 30 km away from the Line of Control (LoC) — the military-controlled divide between the Indian-occupied and Pakistani halves of Kashmir. However, while this proposal may be a good one for ensuring peace in that region, it is ineffective unless complemented with a raft of other agreements drawn up to dissipate the tensions between the two sides. If a framework to diffuse the risk of military confrontation is to be successful, the LoC must be made porous so as to ease trade and travel across it. The way forward to preserving peace along the divide is by encouraging people-to-people contact through a liberalised visa regime, thereby making it a meeting point for the divided Kashmiris and Indians and Pakistanis. If we are to live with weapons of mass destruction in a region with a volatile history, the criticality of arrangements to ensure that there is no tripping of the nuclear wire cannot be underscored enough. Thus, the five-year extension of an agreement to reduce the risk of accidents should be welcomed as it signifies a mutual understanding of the enormous repercussions of accidental nuclear incidents. Together with the recent MFN status awarded by Pakistan to India and the meetings between the foreign ministers and prime ministers of the two countries, the CBM talks represent a sea change in the hitherto frozen state of affairs between the two countries since the 2008 Mumbai attacks as India has come back to the negotiating table and understood the need for mutual dialogue. *