Pakistan is prepared to withdraw its first-strike nuclear threat and push to create an economic union with India in an effort to bring peace to south Asia, Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, said at the weekend in the warmest overture to his country’s southern neighbour in decades.

His words are one of the strongest expressions yet of a desire to heal the rift between the two countries that has existed since the partition of India in 1947 to create the Muslim majority republic. Both have developed nuclear weapons capabilities and fought conventional wars against one another.