Pakistan will promote junior foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar to the status of a full foreign minister ahead of peace talks in India next week, an official said Monday.
'Khar is expected to be sworn in as foreign minister later this week,' the official said.
Pakistan has had no foreign minister since Shah Mehmood Qureshi was dropped in a cabinet reshuffle in February, during which time it has had to navigate a huge crisis in US relations over the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The talks scheduled for July 26 in New Delhi mark the first foreign minister talks between bitter rivals Pakistan and India in a year.
'The government wants Pakistan to be represented by a full-fledged foreign minister in the forthcoming talks with India and it is because of this reason that the position of Hina Rabbani Khar is being elevated,' the official said.
India suspended a four-year peace process with Pakistan after attacks in its financial capital Mumbai killed 166 people in November 2008.
India blamed the attack on Pakistan's banned Lashkar-e-Taiba group and Islamabad acknowledged that the plot was hatched at least partly on its soil.
But in February, India and Pakistan announced that peace talks would resume after a meeting in Bhutan in February.
Relations between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, have been plagued by border and resource disputes, and accusations of Pakistani militant activity against India.
Two of the three wars were over Kashmir, where militants have been fighting New Delhi's rule for two decades in an insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Source : New Age
No comments:
Post a Comment