Chidambaram to go to Pak on Feb 26 for SAARC

Sreeparna C Mukhuty
On Board Special Aircraft, Feb 3 (PTI) In the first
high-level bilateral visit since Mumbai terror attacks, Indian
Home Minister P Chidambaram will travel to Pakistan on
February 26 for a SAARC meeting on a two-day visit that is
expected to break the deadlock in Indo-Pak dialogue.
Announcing the visit of Chidambaram, Indian External
Affairs Minister S M Krishna Wednesday said the Home Minister
will attend the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) meeting scheduled on February 26 and 27 in
Rawalpindi.
Krishna also indicated the possibility of Chidambaram
holding bilateral meetings with his Pakistani counterpart
Rehman Malik and other leaders on the sidelines of the third
SAARC Interior Ministers' Conference.
"Chidambaram will get a chance to have very useful
exchanges with his counterparts and other leaders in
Pakistan," he told reporters accompanying him on his two-day
official visit to Kuwait.
This will be the first visit by an Indian Minister to
Pakistan since May 2008 when then Indian External Affairs
Minister Pranab Mukherjee had gone there for Composite
Dialogue.
The visit also indicate a thaw in Indo-Pak relations,
which has been going through a turbulent phase since the
November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai with the evidence leading
to the fact that these were conspired and hatched in Pakistan.
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