Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith will visit Pakistan from February 16-18 and would hold high level meetings with Pakistani authorities. It will be the first high-level visit from Australia after Prime Minister John Howard who visited Pakistan in 2005.
According to details provided by foreign office on Saturday, during his visit the Australian Foreign Minister will hold official talks with Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi on issues of mutual interest. The Australian Foreign Minister will also call on the President Asif Ali Zardari, and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani besides calling on Advisor to the Prime Minister on Interior A. Rehman Malik and Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani.
In addition to bilateral relations, regional and global issues were also likely to be discussed during the talks. Pakistan-Australia relations refers to the bilateral relations between the two countries, which have been friendly with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf having visited Australia in 2005 and the former Prime Minister of Australia John Howard also paid a visit to Pakistan in 2005 following the devastating earthquake which shattered the country.
During President Musharraf's visit in 2005, the two nations signed a counter-terrorism pact which was an agreement between Pakistan and Australia in countering terrorism, which remains a wide-scale global problem, and the memorandum also further allowed joint training exercise between the Pakistani and Australian security forces as well as the sharing of sensitive intelligence. The two countries in the past have been co-operating significantly in talks and actions on joint ventures such as agriculture, dairy, livestock and mining.