Updated on
Summary India and Pakistan have announced on Thursday to resume wide-ranging peace talks that were frozen after the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said that Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi will visit India in July to hold talks with his counterpart to review progress on the dialogue process and the dates of the aforementioned meetings will be fixed through diplomatic channels and will be preceded by a meeting of the two foreign secretaries.
Prior to the visit of Foreign Minister Qureshi, the meetings at the level of respective Secretaries will be convened on counter-terrorism (including progress on Mumbai trial), humanitarian issues, peace and security. The meeting will also focus on Confidence Building Measures including Jammu and Kashmir, promotion of friendly exchanges, Siachen, economic issues, Wullar Barrage/Tulbul Navigation Project and Sir Creek (at the level of Additional Secretaries/Surveyors General). The Foreign Secretaries of Pakistan and India met in Thimphu on February 6 to carry forward this process, and later briefed their respective governments. In pursuance of the mandate given by the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan following their meeting in Thimphu in April 2010, the Minister of External Affairs of India and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan had met in Islamabad in July 2010 to review the current state of bilateral relations. The two foreign ministers also discussed steps to promote trust and confidence between the two countries.
