SAARC Yatra: Jaishankar meets Pak's Foreign Secretary

From Sajjad Hussain Islamabad, Mar 3: After a seven-month hiatus, India and Pakistan today renewed FS-level talks, with Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar meeting with his counterpart Aizaz Chaudhary after arriving here as part of "SAARC yatra".

Jaishankar, who arrived here from Dhaka this morning, was received by Indian High Commissioner T C A Raghavan at the airport. The Foreign Secretary met Chaudhary at the Foreign Office here, the first FS-level meeting since India called them off last year after Pakistan's High Commissioner in New Delhi held consultations with Kashmiri separatists.

Jaishankar said that he was happy to be visiting Pakistan and that he looks forward to having substantial and meaningful negotiations with Pakistani officials, Dawn reported. Pakistan has already expressed hope that the talks would lead to resumption of Indo-Pak dialogue.

On its part, India has maintained that it will discuss the ways to take forward the "process of normalisation" between the two countries. Jaishankar, who started his "SAARC yatra" on Sunday with Bhutan and visited Bangladesh yesterday, will also call on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif later before flying out to Afghanistan tomorrow.

Last month, using cricket diplomacy Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Sharif and also told him about Jaishankar's "SAARC yatra". The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) -- an economic and geopolitical grouping of eight countries located in South Asia -- includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka as its members.

PTI