Pak, India security advisers to meet on 23rd

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Thursday announced that its National Security Adviser (NSA) Sartaj Aziz would be meeting his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval in New Delhi on August 23-24.
“I can confirm that I’ll be visiting India on August 23,” Sartaj Aziz confirmed when he was prodded by the media at the Foreign Office.
“This is not a breakthrough in terms of composite dialogue and all the issues, but at least it is an ice breaking on some issues.
Let’s hope it will lead to further comprehensive dialogue on other issues between the two countries”, said Aziz, who seemed clearly disappointed as Pakistan wants uninterruptible dialogue on all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, instead of ‘Modi style’ limited engagement agreed upon in Ufa.
After 10 days of mulling over New Delhi’s invitation, Aziz Thursday afternoon finally admitted that Pakistan had accepted India’s proposal for talks.
An investigation by The News showed that neither the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, nor the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, the Indian NSA office and the Indian High Commission in Islamabad had been officially conveyed Pakistan’s decision of accepting the invitation till Thursday night.
Islamabad sent its acceptance to New Delhi through the media while diplomats were expecting an official communication by Friday.
As talks are expected to start by end August, the decision for the two NSAs meeting, which is being viewed as the most important one in bilateral relations, comes after a meeting between the prime ministers of two countries on the sidelines of the SCO conference in Ufa.
Sartaj Aziz this past week had told The News that Pakistan was still mulling over the Indian invitation and working on the talks agenda.
Aziz said the government was also monitoring situation at the LoC and Working Boundary and continuous ceasefire violations and after assessing the situation would be able to respond to New Delhi.
This was followed by a terrorist attack in Gurdaspur and another one in Jammu.
New Delhi said the attackers came from Pakistan but stopped short of blaming the Government of Pakistan for the attacks in which several lives were lost. Later in a meeting, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and COAS Raheel Sharif also touched upon bilateral relations with India among other issues related to the foreign policy, and the Indian invitation came up as well.
“Everyone is in favor of NSAs meeting and there is no doubt that Nawaz Sharif is very keen that his NSA Sartaj Aziz attends this meeting which for him is very important and also something he had agreed to when he met his Indian counterpart”, an official involved with the process had earlier told The News.