Summary Indian Secretary Sujata Singh invited her Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad to start dialogue.
ISLAMABAD: (Dunya News) – Foreign Secretaries of Pakistan and India are due to meet on August 25, 2014, the Foreign Office Spokesperson told today (Wednesday). According to FO Spokesperson, Indian foreign Secretary Sujata Singh talked to her Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry over the telephone and invited him to begin formal talks on the foreign secretary level between the two countries.
Both the officials decided to meet in Islamabad on August 25. Foreign Office Spokesperson said that the meeting will prove helpful in promoting the dialogue process between the neighbouring countries. The two secretaries also agreed to begin purposeful talks on all the matters of mutual interest.
The Prime Ministers of Pakistan and India had agreed to start the Foreign Secretary level talks during their discussions in May when Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif had visited India to attend Narendera Modi’s swearing in ceremony.
"In keeping with the vision of the two Prime Ministers to improve and establish good neighbourly relations, the foreign secretaries agreed that the dialogue process between the two countries should be result-oriented," the statement from Foreign Office Spokesperson added.
Bilateral relations between India and Pakistan had broken down in November 2008 after Mumbai Attacks. India has maintained ever since that some Pakistanis were involved in those attacks and the dialogue process has remained stalled since then. But after swearing in of Narendera Modi, the Bharatia Janata Party (BJP) hardliner, as the Prime Minister of India, the relations have improved considerably. Modi invited his Pakistani counterpart PM Nawaz Sharif on his oath-taking ceremony and both heads of the state vowed to renew the dialogue process during their meeting in New Delhi.
The current regimes in both Pakistan and India are considered to be business friendly and there is strong hope that the two countries will shed the past and increase their bilateral trade which currently stands at around 2.5 billion dollars.
India has been demanding the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status from Pakistan while Pakistan has abstained from granting India its wish so far. Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had said in an interview to the state television in April that Pakistan did not consider granting MFN status to India. “185 Pakistani products have a great potential in Indian market but a ban is imposed in India on import of these items from Pakistan. If India allows import of these items, or at least some of them, we shall also consider lifting ban from certain Indian items”, the Finance Minister had said. “MFN status can only be considered once the negative lists get eliminated”, Ishaq Dar had said.
