NEW DELHI, June 18: A meeting of the standing committee of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc), comprising the foreign secretaries of the seven member nations, will be held in Kathmandu on July 9 and 10, to finalize the date for next summit of the organization, United News of India said on Wednesday quoting official sources.

It quoted Nepal’s Foreign Secretary Madhu Raman Acharya as saying in Kathmandu that the 12th Saarc summit would be held in Islamabad sometime in December this year. The standing committee in its meeting will seek to finalize the dates for the summit, he added.

“However, Pakistan has not officially proposed any date so far,” Mr Acharya said.

The 12th summit was originally scheduled for January 2003, but was postponed due to continued tension between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir issue.

Nepal, currently, holds the chair of Saarc, comprising Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives.