New Delhi: Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj will travel to Islamabad on December 8 to attend the Heart of Asia security conference being held there, The Economic Times reported, citing government sources.
According to the report, she will be accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar.
The Foreign minister's upcoming visit assumes significance as it will be the first high-level engagement between India and Pakistan since PM Narendra Modi and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif met in Ufa in July this year. Swaraj is expected to call on Sharif and his adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz on the sidelines of the conference.
Foreign Secretary Jaishankar, however, is unlikely to hold a separate meeting with his counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary during his visit. Swaraj will return to India in the evening the next day, making her visit last not more than 24 hours, the news report stated.
With Pakistan playing host to the conference, Swaraj's scheduled engagements are likely to be in the nature of courtesy meetings. As per government sources, India will continue to insist that Pakistan must acknowledge the primacy of the issue of terrorism in bilateral relations.
The handshake between Modi and Sharif at the climate change conference in Paris is said to have prompted the government to send Swaraj to Pakistan. The government was earlier deliberating upon sending Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh for the conference.
Another reason why India found it difficult to ignore Pakistan's invitation to Swaraj to attend the conference was that the same had been extended by Afghanistan too.
In line with the decisions arrived at in Ufa, India has insisted that discussions on terrorism between the two sides begin at the level of the National Security Advisors. Pakistan, on the other hand, has maintained that foreign secretaries too meet almost simultaneously to discuss other outstanding issues, including the "core issue" of Kashmir.
