Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani will pay an official visit to Britain next month for the first annual review of the enhanced strategic dialogue, the Foreign Office said on Thursday.
During weekly news briefing Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said Gilani was expected to travel to the UK in the second week of May.
He said the prime minister will hold wide-ranging talks with his British counterpart and other leaders that will focus on strengthening bilateral ties and the enhanced strategic dialogue.
Gilani was also expected to discuss the role of Pakistani immigrants in Britain, the war against militancy, the regional situation and Pakistan’s efforts for greater access to European Union markets, Basit said.
During his last visit to Pakistan, British Prime Minister David Cameron had said Britain wanted to deepen and enhance bilateral partnership. “Britain is home to one million people of Pakistani origin,” he had said.
Britain has been providing assistance to Pakistan in different fields, including education, health, and capacity building in various departments. The two countries are also keen to increase bilateral trade to ₤2.5 billion by 2015.
About expansion in the US embassy in Islamabad, the spokesman said, “We are in touch with all the relevant departments and looking into the matter.”
To a question, Basit said Pakistan had received an invitation for Chicago Summit on Afghanistan, but no decision on attending it had been made to yet.
The FO spokesman said according to initial reports, no Pakistani was hit by the earthquake in Indonesia, and the Foreign Office was in close contact with its Mission in Jakarta.
To another question, he said Pakistan wanted “normal and mutually beneficial relations” with the US but “the shape of future bilateral ties will be decided by an ongoing parliamentary review ordered by the government”.
“There is a mutual desire to have normal and mutually beneficial relations. We never broke our relations with the US. There is a problem and both sides are working to overcome the current difficulties in our bilateral relations,” Basit said.
“Everything hinges on the final policy guidelines we get from the parliament and we’re all waiting for the process to complete,” he said in response to questions on the review that was ordered after a cross-border NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.
Recent visits to Islamabad by senior American civil and military officials were aimed at “discussing all the issues threadbare” and to see “how best we can address the present difficulties”, Basit said.
Relations with the US would be strengthened after the completion of the parliamentary review, he said.
To a question on the troubled Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, Basit said there was no pressure from Saudi Arabia on Pakistan to abandon the venture. Recent media reports had suggested that Saudi Arabia had offered financial aid and energy cooperation to get Pakistan to abandon the pipeline, which may face Western sanctions.
“Saudi Arabia is a brotherly country and we have very strong relations in all areas…There is no pressure from Saudi Arabia on the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project. Iran is also a brotherly country and…we consider both as friends and continue our relations with both independently,” he said.
On Pakistan-India relations, he said President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s commitment to a pragmatic and practical dialogue will help push forward the bilateral peace process and resolve all core issues, including the Kashmir dispute.
“Both President Zardari and Prime Minister Singh, following their meeting (on April 8), reiterated their mutual desire to have a pragmatic and practical dialogue process and move forward towards resolving all the core issues which continue to bedevil our relations,” Basit said.
He said this reiteration of the commitment by the two leaders would “help push the peace and dialogue process forward because at the end of the day, the effectiveness, importance or credibility of any dialogue process hinges on its results”.
Basit noted that Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar had expressed hope that the India-Pakistan dialogue would be “uninterrupted and result-oriented”. Pakistan is looking forward to achieving results through the dialogue, he said.
“As far as Pakistan is concerned, we have always maintained that all issues between Pakistan and India should be resolved, especially the core dispute of Jammu and Kashmir. That continues to be our policy,” he said.
