Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry will leave for India tomorrow to participate in a meeting of senior officials during the Heart of Asia ─ Istanbul Process in New Delhi.
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However, the spotlight could turn on a likely meeting between Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry and his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar on the sidelines of the conference.
According to a statement issued by the Pakistan Foreign Office, since its inception in 2011, Pakistan has continued to play an active role in the Heart of Asia – Istanbul Process.
Last week responding question regarding the possibility of bilateral meeting on sidelines of the multilateral event, the spokesperson had reiterated Pakistan’s ready for dialogue with India.
The meeting had led to major breakthroughs in Pakistan’s ties with Afghanistan and India. The two secretaries had an informal brief interaction during a SAARC meeting in Nepal in March this year. New Delhi had then asked Islamabad to take credible action to bring the culprits to book before any comprehensive talks could be possible, following which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had constituted a high-level inter-agency Joint Investigation Team(JIT) to probe the attack. It, however, did not mention anything about Chaudhry’s meeting with Jaishankar.
The Afghanistan conference in Delhi follows the 5th Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference in Islamabad on December 9, 2015.
Pakistani delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations at the sidelines of the meeting.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had visited Islamabad to attend the conference that adopted the Islamabad declaration for enhanced regional cooperation to countering security threats.
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The Foreign Secretary-level Indo-Pak dialogue suffered after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January.
