New Delhi: Pakistan has formally proposed to India a schedule for talks on Round three of the composite dialogue process.
A detailed list of dates have been proposed for talks between the concerned officials of the Sir Creek, Siachen, Trade and Economic Cooperation, Wullar Barrage, Terrorism and Drug Trafficking and Promotion of friendly and cultural exchange, Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said on Thursday.
The proposed talks on Siachen and Sir Creek will be held in the first week of May in Delhi while Wullar Barrage/Tulbull Navigation Project will be taken up in June.
Islamabad will host the talks on economic and trade ties in the last week of March, on promotion of friendly relations in April/May and on terrorism and drug trafficking in July.
The talks will follow review discussions by the foreign secretaries of both the countries and a foreign ministerial level meeting.
The Indian foreign ministry has said that they are considering them and will respond in due course of time.
The two countries, which resumed the long stalled talks after years of tensions in February 2004, have thus far had three rounds of composite dialogue process with talks by the Foreign Secretaries in New Delhi on Peace and Security, Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) and Kashmir.
Talks of the remaining items of the process was expected to be concluded by middle of this year after which Foreign Secretaries and later Foreign Ministers would meet and review the outcome of the talks on all the subjects.
The two sides made considerable progress on issues like Sir Creek and Siachen as well as the Trade and Economic cooperation during the last two rounds.
After the first round, Indian and Pakistani navies conducted a joint survey of the Sir Creek, a strip of disputed marshy land off Kutch coast.
The two sides were trying to reach an agreement through talks based on the results of the joint survey.
On Siachen glacier too, both sides tried to narrow their differences but the talks bogged down on the issue of demarcation of present positions held by the Indian troops on the world's highest battlefield.
Pakistan wants unilateral withdrawal by both sides to previous positions and do not want to authenticate the Indian positions on maps, fearing it would amount to conceding the Indian stand on the Glacier.
The two sides were trying to work out a way out by exploring possibilities to authenticate the areas through satellite imagery.
On Trade and Economic cooperation, the two sides constituted a Joint Study Group headed by Commerce Secretaries of both the countries to study Pakistan's stand that India has higher tariff regime which made Pakistani goods uncompetitive.
Pakistan also continues to refuse to grant Most Favoured Nation status to India and has not so far ratified South Asian Free Trade Area (SATA), which should have been operationalised by the beginning of this year.
(With inputs from PTI)
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