NEW DELHI, June 20: The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan flew together to Qingdao in China from Beijing on Sunday, surprising those who were waiting for their proposed first meeting later on the margins of the Asian Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) starting in Qingdao on Monday , official sources told Dawn.

The flight itinerary of Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri and his Indian counterpart Kunwar Natwar Singh apparently surprised their officials and may have been unplanned.

But, the sources said, the foreign ministers apparently sat together during the journey to the sea resort, a key venue for sailing competitions at the 2008 Olympics. They had arrived in Beijing separately.

The Press Trust of India in a dispatch from Qingdao said the two foreign ministers would meet on Monday "to provide the necessary political impetus to the composite dialogue process initiated by the two nuclear neighbours".

Mr Singh has invited Mr Kasuri to a 'working lunch' on the sidelines of the third Asian Cooperation Dialogue during which the entire gamut of bilateral ties would come up for discussion.

"Though it will not be a full-fledged meeting, the very fact that Mr Singh and Mr Kasuri are using a multilateral forum, that too in China, for a bilateral meeting augurs well for Indo-Pak relations," PTI said, quoting unidentified sources.