Islamabad: Pakistan hopes the forthcoming foreign-secretary level talks with India will help reduce current tensions on the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir and the working border near the eastern Pakistani city of Sialkot.

“The talks are expected to improve the situation,” Adivser to Pakistani PM on foreign affairs and national security Sartaj Aziz said while talking to reporters in Lahore on Sunday.

Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar is arriving in Islamabad on March 3 for talks with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, which will restart the long-stalled bilateral dialogue process.

Aziz said the meeting would cover all issues including the dispute over the Himalaya region of Kashmir, seen as the main hurdle in the way of normalisation of relations between Pakistan and India.

No breakthrough has ever emerged in bilateral dialogue on the thorny issue.

Pakistan insists the row should resolved for regional pace and stability in accordance with 1948-49 UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir that called for a referendum in the region for its people to de-ice their future.

Aziz said last year that India in August cancelled a mutually scheduled foreign secretary level meeting it had scheduled to take the initiative to restore the process.

The adviser said Pakistan has the capability to defend itself.

He pointed out that a confidence-building environment has been restored with Kabul, and cooperation with Afghanistan in intelligence sharing and defence sector has improved.

Aziz said Pakistan would never allow its soil to be used against Afghanistan.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, speaking to media in his hometown of Sialkot, said India’s war hysteria is behind the increase in its defence budget. The Indian minister has been violating LoC and working boundary by resorting to unprovoked firing.

Army Chief General Raheel Sharif, while visiting Sialkot garrison and troops in forward locations a few days ago, warned that the Pakistan army would give a “befitting response” to Indian provocations on the LoC and the working boundary.