Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistan counterpart Salman Bashir were to hold
talks on the sidelines of a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting in
Thimphu, the Bhutanese capital
NEW DELHI: The top diplomats of India and Pakistan are due to meet Sunday in Bhutan in the first high-level meeting between the two rival countries since July.
Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistan counterpart Salman Bashir were to hold talks on the sidelines of a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting in Thimphu, the Bhutanese capital.
India suspended a peace dialogue with Pakistan in the wake of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, which claimed 166 lives, but the two countries last year began to explore a resumption of structured talks.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi held a meeting with his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna in Islamabad in July.
“Dialogue between India and Pakistan is necessary and a must if we are to satisfactorily resolve the outstanding issues between our two countries,” Rao was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency.
“We have a number of outstanding issues. So we are going into this with an open mind and constructive attitude.” PTI quoted Bashir as saying that the talks on Sunday would focus on making progress towards another meeting between the countries’ foreign ministers.
“My expectations are that we should be working towards continued engagement,” he said.
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