The newly-elected Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will visit New Delhi later this year as South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (Saarc) chairman, when he is also expected to hold talks with the Indian leaders.
According to official sources in Delhi, dates for the visit, which would bring about his first meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, are being discussed for either first half of October or mid-November, intervening period being holy month of Ramazan.
Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers are already due to meet in New Delhi on September 5 to 6. The Indian Premier is now almost certain to meet President General Pervez Musharraf in New York in third week of September where both have to address the UN general assembly. Followed this comes the visit of Indian Congress President Sonia Gandhi to Islamabad in December.
The sources said they expected enough momentum from ongoing composite dialogue between the two countries to make the proposed visit a success.
Shaukat Aziz and Manmohan Singh are then scheduled to meet in Bangladesh capital of Dhaka on the margins of the Saarc Summit in January next year.
The sources said there was considerable confidence on both sides that the meeting between Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, expected to be sworn in as Foreign minister in the new cabinet, and Indian Foreign Minister Kunwar Natwar Singh would signal an "agreeable" outcome.
There are two other meetings hitched to Singh-Kasuri talks, which in turn would be looking at Indian Prime Minister's speech in his Independence Day address of August 15, when he underscored his determination to pursue peace process with Pakistan vigorously.
While Sonia Gandhi regarded as the most powerful leader in India that day, that fact itself expected to help create appropriate atmosphere for her proposed visit on invitation of Pakistani leadership to succeed, sources in New Delhi pointed out.
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