Indian Foreign Secretary in Pakistan for bilateral talks

Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao arrived in Islamabad on Wednesday to hold talks for further bilateral talks, officials said.

Nirupama Rao will meet with Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir on Thursday, they said.

Pakistan on Wednesday freed 17 Indian prisoners ahead of the top level talks. The prisoners were handed over to the Indian authorities at Wagah Border, foreign ministry officials said.

The talks of foreign secretaries will be held ahead of foreign ministers meeting of the two countries on July 15. Sources said that the two foreign secretaries will finalize agenda for the meeting of the foreign ministers.

Pakistan and India held a meeting between the two foreign secretaries in New Delhi on Feb. 25, their first official talks in 15 months after the Mumbai attacks and agreed to maintain process of peace talks.

In May, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi invited his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna to Islamabad, raising hopes for the revival of the stalled bilateral dialogue process.

Meanwhile, Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram is to arrive in Islamabad for a multilateral meeting of interior ministers of South Asian nations.

Chidambaram's trip to Islamabad is the first India's ministerial visit to Pakistan since May 2008 when the then External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had gone for talks as part of the bilateral composite dialogue. Things worsened after the Mumbai terror attacks on Nov. 26, 2008.

Chidambaram will meet his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik to discuss the ongoing Pakistani investigations and trials in the Mumbai attack case, sources said.

Source: Xinhua