When Modi met Sharif

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)

STORY: A brief meeting between India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, on Thursday (November 27) salvaged a summit of South Asian leaders, with all eight countries clinching a last-minute deal to create a regional electricity grid.

The pact at the summit's closing ceremony in the Nepali capital will buttress Modi's ambition for South Asia to become a viable economic counterweight to China, which has made sweeping inroads in the region.

Modi shook hands with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at a mountain retreat outside Kathmandu and then again before the curtain went down on the conference. Video footage showed the two men smiling and exchanging a few words.

Except for these brief exchanges, the two leaders had spent most of the summit cold-shouldering each other, however.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. On Thursday, the worst