Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday chaired a meeting at the PM House to develop a comprehensive, coherent and well-co-ordinated approach for the forthcoming Pakistan-US strategic dialogue. The Pakistan-US strategic dialogue is scheduled to be held on March 24 in Washington and would broadly cover economic, defence, security and social sectors.
A number of proposals like structured-dialogue process envisaging sectoral track co-operation with the US to review the status of on-going programmes and projects will also be taken up in the talks. Prime Minister said the objective of strategic dialogue was to enhance people-to-people strategic relationship which would bridge trust deficit.
Gilani said his government's objective was not only to upgrade the dialogue status enhancing Pak-US partnership to ministerial level, but also to develop a solid framework for long-term Pakistan-US relations. He directed all concerned ministries to identify specific programmes and projects in each sector in accordance with the national development priorities; both in short and long terms and also to clearly indicate priority areas which require support and technical assistance.
Minister for Water & Power Raja Parvaiz Ashraf, Ms Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Special Assistant to PM on Social Sector, Kamal Majeedullah, Special Assistant to PM on Water & Power, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, secretaries of Foreign Affairs, Petroleum, Water & Power, Commerce, Defence, Food and Agriculture, Finance, Information Technology, Science & Technology, Education and Interior and other senior military and civil officers attended the meeting.