A leading Indian business lobby group Thursday expressed disappointment at the exclusion of Pakistan's trade minister and business representatives from the Pakistan President Prevez Musharraf's entourage for the July 14-16 summit.

The lobby group says that the move clearly signals trade and business issues may not be on the table during the summit at Agra between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Musharraf.

"We had expected some positive outcome on the trade front during the summit. It would be a setback for the trader communities in India and Pakistan if some important bilateral trade issues are not discussed," said Anjan Roy of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

FICCI, one of India's leading lobby groups, led a team of 35 industrialists to Islamabad in May -- the first such visit since 1995 -- to try to boost trade, although relations between the two countries have been frosty for five decades.

"It would have helped both the countries if they chose to discuss and try to resolve some of the trade issues that have put up roadblocks in the way of boosting Indo-Pak trade," he told.

The dismal trade relations between India and Pakistan took a further nose-dive after a bloody border conflict in Kashmir's Kargil region in the summer of 1999.

Pakistan has since banned the import of sugar from India even though it costs a third of what it pays for sugar from Brazil. New Delhi, in turn, refuses to buy cotton from Islamabad.

"Now we only hope that the summit ends on a positive note so that we can step up trader-to-trader contact between the two countries," Roy said.

Trade between India and Pakistan was a meager $149-million in 2000. Unofficial trade, smuggled or routed through third countries, on the other hand, totals a whopping $1.0 billion annually.

India's major exports items are oil mills, drugs and pharmaceuticals, plastics, and inorganic and organic chemicals. New Delhi imports fruits and nuts, sugar, rice, spices, cotton, textile yarn, fabrics, leather and other crude materials.