Islamabad: Pakistan and India held their first high-level talks for nearly a year on Tuesday, with an Indian diplomat hailing the meeting in Islamabad as “positive and constructive”.
Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is visiting Pakistan for the first senior-level dialogue between the nuclear-armed rivals since their prime ministers met in New Delhi last May.
Jaishankar said, after “ice-breaking” talks with his Pakistani counterpart here on Tuesday, that the two countries have agreed to work together, find common ground and narrow differences.
He told reporters that the talks with Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry were held in “very constructive and positive atmosphere.”
Jaishankar, who arrived earlier in the day on a two-day visit to Pakistan as part of a tour of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), said both the sides engaged on each other’s concerns and interests.
He said Pakistan would assume the next chairmanship of SAARC and India wants to work together with it to achieve the true potential of the regional grouping.
The Indian foreign secretary said both Pakistan and India have agreed that ensuring peace and tranquillity on the border is vital.
He said India wants to forge cooperative relations with all the neighbouring countries.
“This visit is an ice-breaking development,” Jaishankar said, in apparent reference to the long-stalled dialogue process between the two nuclear-armed countries.
Jaishankar called on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif later in the day and officials said bilateral relations and security situation in the region were discussed.
Ahead of the foreign secretaries’ meeting, the Pakistani foreign office had expressed the hope that the talks would lead to resumption of dialogue between the two countries.
Last year, India cancelled a scheduled meeting between the foreign secretaries in reaction to talks held by Pakistani high commissioner in New Delhi with Kashmiri separatists.
The visit of the Indian foreign secretary took place against a backdrop of tension and skirmishes on the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir and the working boundary close to the eastern Pakistani city of Sialkot.
The dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, divided between the two countries, has been a barrier to normalisation of relations.
