January 18, 2003	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 14, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 17: President Gen Pervez Musharraf will visit Russia from Feb 4 to 6 to discuss measures for enhancing bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

He is visiting Moscow at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin who had invited the president in June last, a Foreign Ministry statement said here on Friday.

The two countries have formed a joint working group on combating terrorism, that has already met and both are cooperating in the UN Security Council.

President Musharraf’s visit to Russia marks a new turn in the Pakistan-Russia relations, and the visit is expected to lay the foundation for enhanced bilateral cooperation, the statement said.

Relations between the two sides were uneasy during the Cold War when Islamabad was a key Western ally and the former Soviet Union was close to Pakistan’s arch-rival India, and particularly during Moscow’s occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Both sides have tried to improve bilateral relations after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Diplomatic sources said that besides discussing bilateral relations and cooperation, the two sides were likely to focus on the tense relations between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir dispute and cooperation in the international fight against terrorism.