Pakistani and Indian officials will meet at a regional conference in Bhutan next month to resume a rapprochement process between the nuclear-armed rivals, an official said Saturday. The talks are to be held during a meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) in Bhutan, foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said in a statement.
"The foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India will meet on the margins of the SAARC Standing Committee meeting scheduled to take place in Thimphu on 6-7 February 2011," the statement said. India suspended a peace dialogue with Pakistan in the wake of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, which claimed 166 lives, and the two countries recently begun to explore a resumption of structured talks.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi held a meeting with his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna in Islamabad in July. The discussions were the third high-level contact in a six-month thaw, which the United States has encouraged as a means of boosting regional stability, given the war in Afghanistan. But the talks ended on a sour note with Qureshi blaming India for a "selective focus on terror" and ignoring the thorny issues that separated the South Asian neighbours.
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