Amritsar, Dec. 4: National security adviser Ajit Doval briefly met Pakistan's top diplomat Sartaj Aziz around midnight on Saturday, setting the stage for fresh efforts by the neighbours to defuse diplomatic tensions and break out of a spiral of firing on the border.

Indian officials said Doval and Aziz, the special adviser on foreign affairs to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, chatted during a walk of about 100 feet.

They insisted the conversation was impromptu, and occurred while the Pakistan diplomat was leaving a collective call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi by foreign ministers visiting for the Heart of Asia summit here.

"This is to categorically state that there was no pull-aside or bilateral meeting between the two," foreign ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said today.

Pakistani officials suggested that while the conversation was not in the form of a structured dialogue, it did offer both sides an opportunity to talk to -- and not just at - each other.

"It was not a structured talk so it's not like I can give you any outcomes," Aziz told journalists in Pakistan late in the evening at a media briefing immediately after landing. "But they appreciated, everyone appreciated, that I had come despite our current tensions."

Pull-aside meetings and bilateral talks are formal structured conversations, but leaders and officials frequently have brush-by meetings - unstructured informal chats - on the margins of multilateral meets, like the UN General Assembly. Modi and Sharif had one such two-minute meeting in Paris last year that planted the seed for a rapprochement that turned out to be short-lived.

While brush-by meetings are often unplanned - or are at least portrayed as unplanned - they are rarely unintended.

The tussle to control the narrative over what happened in the chat between Aziz and Doval spilled out into the open by the evening. Pakistan claimed Aziz was not allowed to visit the Golden Temple or to speak with journalists, while India insisted the diplomat's movements were restricted only because of "security considerations".

Pakistani officials had earlier on Sunday released a photograph of Doval walking alongside Aziz, gesturing with his hands while speaking. In the afternoon, Indian news agency PTI also released a photograph.

Neither side divulged details of the conversation, except to indicate that they were aimed at bringing down frenetic exchanges of fire along the Line of Control that have left a 2003 ceasefire notional. With winter setting in, infiltration from Pakistan is expected to reduce, and a parallel reduction in cross-border firing could allow the neighbours to explore afresh the prospects of a sustained dialogue.

Hints of a fresh attempt at a diplomatic thaw were also evident in Modi's comments as he inaugurated the Heart of Asia meet on Sunday morning. The Prime Minister stuck to India's traditional positions on the need to fight terrorism collectively, and to target not just militants but also those that shelter and support them.

"Terrorism and externally induced instability pose the gravest threat to Afghanistan's peace, stability and prosperity," Modi said. "Silence and inaction against terrorism in Afghanistan and our region will only embolden terrorists and their masters."

But the language, at a conference on Afghanistan, with Pakistan as a key member and terrorism a common threat, was muted compared to Modi's comments in October at two summits where Islamabad was not even represented.

At three back-to-back meetings with leaders of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (Brics) grouping - principally an economic bloc - Modi had repeatedly made sharp references to Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.

"Tragically, its (terrorism's) mothership is a country in India's neighbourhood," the Prime Minister had said on October 16. "Terror modules around the world are linked to this mothership."

Then, two hours later, he had singled out Pakistan at a meeting of the Brics leaders with counterparts from the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec) in Goa. The Bimstec consists of Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan.

"In South Asia and Bimstec, all nation states, barring one, are motivated to pursue a path of peace, development and economic prosperity for its people," Modi had said. "Unfortunately, this country in India's neighbourhood embraces and radiates the darkness of terrorism. Terrorism has become its favourite child."

On Saturday night, Modi was far more cordial.#Around 11pm last night, the foreign ministers of Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Slovakia - which participated in the summit as the European Union President this month - and Aziz had collectively called on Modi. They had earlier in the evening joined Modi for dinner at a heritage restaurant 4km from the city's Radisson Blu hotel, the venue of the Heart of Asia summit.

While a foreign office readout of the call-on only referred to Modi articulating cooperation against terrorism, and the foreign ministers agreeing with him, the Indian Prime Minister also exchanged a few words with Aziz, officials from both sides said.

Modi asked Aziz about Sharif's health - the Pakistan Prime Minister had undergone a cardiac bypass surgery in London earlier this year. Aziz in turn conveyed wishes from Sharif to Modi.

It was after the call-on that Aziz and Doval met and chatted, officials said.

"There is definitely a need for talks," Aziz said in his Islamabad briefing. "It helps reduce tensions."

The latest attempt at a thaw carries shades of a similar effort almost exactly a year ago when Modi had walked up to Sharif in a waiting lounge for leaders at the Paris climate change summit.

Then, the Indian foreign office had released an image of that brief meeting - just two minutes long, according to officials - but had downplayed its significance, calling it the result of a coincidental presence of both in the room at the same time.

But five days later, Doval flew to Bangkok for a hush-hush meeting with his Pakistan counterpart Nasser Khan Janjua, and both sides later acknowledged that the brief conversation between the Prime Ministers in Paris had laid the ground for the Thailand talks.

The Bangkok meeting in turn provided the ballast for a month of hectic diplomacy that culminated in the Indian Prime Minister flying into Lahore on Christmas, also Sharif's birthday.

It took less than a month for that attempt at a structured dialogue to unravel, after terrorists struck at the Pathankot air base on January 2.

As dusk set on Amritsar, a city harried by large international contingents it isn't used to hosting, the clock was already ticking on the latest attempt by India and Pakistan to step back from booming guns