Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao will hold talks with her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir in Islamabad on June 24 to finalise the agenda for an upcoming meeting of the foreign ministers of the two countries.
Rao is scheduled to arrive in the Pakistan capital on June 23 and will hold talks with the Pakistani foreign secretary the following day, diplomatic sources told PTI.
The parleys will focus on the agenda for a meeting between Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and External Affairs Minister S M Krishna to be held in Islamabad on July 15, the sources said.
Qureshi had recently said that Rao would accompany Union Home Minister P Chidambaram when he travelled to Islamabad to attend a SAARC Interior Ministers meeting on June 26. However, sources said the Indian foreign secretary had decided to advance her visit due to other engagements.
An inter-ministerial meeting will be held on Wednesday to finalise Islamabad's approach to the meeting between the two foreign secretaries, the sources said.
Besides representatives from key ministers like foreign affairs and interior, officials of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency will also attend the meeting.
Rao will be the first senior Indian official to travel to Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. India suspended the composite dialogue process following the attacks, which were blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Tayiba.
