External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj with her Pakistani counterpart, Sartaj Aziz, during a dinner at the Saarc ministerial meeting in Pokhara, Nepal. (Photo: PTI)
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj with her Pakistani counterpart, Sartaj Aziz, during a dinner at the Saarc ministerial meeting in Pokhara, Nepal. (Photo: PTI)
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz were on Wednesday seen engaged in an animated discussion over a dinner here hosted for the ministers of Saarc countries.
Though details of their discussion are not known, Indian officials described it as a “social chit-chat” between the ministers who were seated alongside.
The two ministers are also scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting here on Thursday which was sought by Mr Aziz to extend the invitation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Saarc summit, to be hosted by Pakistan later this year.
This is the second time the two ministers are meeting since December last when Ms Swaraj had travelled to Islamabad for a multilateral meeting and had also held extensive bilateral talks with Mr Aziz after which both countries announced resumption of the comprehensive bilateral dialogue.
During Thursday’s meeting, Ms Swaraj is expected to nudge Pakistan to take action against the perpetrators of the Pathankot airbase attack, which came days after Prime Minister Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore on December 25 last year to attend the 66th birthday of his counterpart Nawaz Sharif.
Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Choudhry were also seen sitting together at another table during the dinner hosted by Saarc secretary-general Arjun Bahadur Thapa.
