Announcing the schedule of meetings of Pak-India dispute resolution working groups, the Foreign Office spokesman said on Wednesday that the meetings would start from November 29 and last until the middle of December. Among the groups' meetings during through 17 days of November and December, the Committee of Experts assigned the trade related matters would meet in New Delhi in the first week of December.
The group containing communication experts, now seized with the Munnabao-Khokhrapar rail link, he said, would meet in Islamabad on December 2 and 3 while the Joint Survey of Boundary Pillars on the Horizontal Segment in the Sir Creek area of the Arabian Sea will be held in Karachi on December 14 and 15.
Their reports, according to earlier information, are to be discussed and finalised by the two Foreign Secretaries for their Foreign Minister's Council for which no dates have been fixed.
The Foreign Secretaries in their meeting in June had scheduled these meetings for July and August but later were changed by the two Foreign Ministers in their meeting in September last.
Dates for the meetings of Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Ministers, it seems, will now coincide with the Saarc Summit at Dhaka in January next year.
The matters "on all issues related to commencement of a bus service between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar" have been fixed at Delhi on December 7 and 8.
The spokesman said that the meeting between Indian Coast Guards and Pakistan's Maritime Security Agency for establishing communication links and preparation of a memo of understanding on it will be taken up at New Delhi on December 3 and 4.
The officials controlling the narcotics traffic will also be meeting at New Delhi on November 29 and 30, and experts meeting on Nuclear confidence building measures and advance notification of missile tests is scheduled on December 14 and 15 at Islamabad.
Similarly, the experts level meeting on conventional confidence building measures will follow at Islamabad immediately after.
He admitted that occupation of Himalayan glacier of Siachen was not part of discussions by any of the groups which will be meeting under the schedule and their timetable will be announced as it is finalised by the countries. He said that military officials had already discussed the question and exchanges subsequent to those have taken place. The two countries, he said, were in touch with each other and whenever a date was finalised "we shall share those with you".
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