Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif is the first visit to Pakistan by an Indian prime minister in nearly 12 years.
Advertisement
Aziz said the visit of Modi was a goodwill visit and it has been welcomed by majority of people in Pakistan and India and the global community. He said that the dialogue process was challenging as it involves hard decision and important issues.
The Indian prime minister had a stopover in Pakistan on his way back to New Delhi from a visit to Afghanistan where he inaugurated the India-funded parliament building.
He was greeted by Mr Sharif at the airport and taken by helicopter to the latter’s ancestral house in Raiwind, 42km from Lahore, where the two leaders had a meeting for over 11/2 hours.
Sartaj Aziz, who is the foreign affairs adviser to Pakistan’s PM Nawaz Shariff, proposed to have talks between India’s and Pakistan’s foreign secretaries on coming January 16.
He has said it would not be fair to expect much from the talks scheduled here next month between the foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India.
As the two foreign secretaries will meet on January 15, Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has started making preparations for his upcoming visit to Islamabad.
The Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office who visited hamlets along the global border here and reviewed the progress of projects, explained to people the benefits of Modi’s visit.
The Home Minister maintained that the “visit was in line with the vision of Vajapyee on India-Pakistan relations”. The methods used by the Prime Minister to ensure this were wrong, he said and added that “You can not shape foreign policy of a country by such irrational methods”.
The two leaders last met during the climate change conference in Paris in November, chatting briefly.
Advertisement
The source say that Walima ceremonies will also be held in the UAE and the United Kingdom next month because many friends of the Sharifs could not make it to Lahore.
