New Delhi: Pakistan Foreign Secretary Sohail Mahmood is in India on a surprise visit as talks of a meeting between the leaders of the two countries gather steam.
Mahmood, accompanied by Pakistan’s acting High Commissioner to India Syed Haidar Shah, was seen offering Eid prayers at New Delhi’s Jama Masjid Wednesday morning.
Islamabad’s last envoy to India, Mahmood was appointed as Pakistan Foreign Secretary in April this year. He left for Islamabad on 14 April, but his family stayed behind.
“He (Mahmood) is on a private visit to take back his family, who had stayed back due to his children’s school exams,” a top official in the Pakistan High Commission told ThePrint. “He did not meet any one in the government.”
Dialogue stalled for over two years
However, according to another official source, the visit is seen as Pakistan’s attempt to pave the way for resumption of dialogue between the countries, which has been stalled for over two years now.
In February, both countries came on the brink of a war after a terrorist affiliated to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed killed 40 CRPF personnel in Pulwama, Kashmir.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistan counterpart Imran Khan will be coming face-to-face during the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek on 13-14 June.
However, a meeting on the sidelines has not yet been confirmed. Modi and Khan did have a telephonic conversation last month, when the Pakistan Prime Minister dialled Modi to congratulate him on his re-election.
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It is time to pick up the threads and resume a substantive dialogue. If the next five years of Indian diplomacy are a mirror image of the last five, it would not add up to a fantastic decade.