NEW DELHI, Aug 27: Prime Minister-elect Shaukat Aziz will visit New Delhi later this year as the Saarc chairman, when he is also expected to hold bilateral talks with Indian leaders, official sources said on Friday.

They said that the dates for the visit, which would bring about his first meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, are being fixed for either the first half of October or mid-November, the intervening period belonging to the holy month of Ramazan.

The sources told Dawn they expected enough momentum from the ongoing composite dialogue between the two countries to make the proposed visit a success. Mr Aziz and Dr Singh are then scheduled to meet in Dhaka on the margins of the Saarc summit in January.

In his speech in parliament on Friday Mr Aziz has spoken of the need to persist with the dialogue with India with eyes riveted to Kashmir. A helpful atmosphere for the widely anticipated summit of two of South Asia's leading economic brains - Dr Singh from the academic stream and Mr Aziz coming from the banking sector - is likely to be created by their foreign ministers due to meet in New Delhi on Sept 5 to 6.

The sources said that there was considerable confidence on both sides that the meeting between Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, expected to be sworn in as foreign minister in the new cabinet, and Indian Foreign Minister Kunwar Natwar Singh would signal an "agreebale" outcome.

There are two other meetings hitched to the Singh-Kasuri talks, which in turn would be looking at the Indian prime minister's speech in his Independence Day address of Aug 15, when he underscored his determination to pursue the peace process with Pakistan vigorously.

First, Dr Singh is now almost certain to meet President Gen Pervez Musharraf in New York in the third week of September where both have to address the UN general assembly. Then comes the visit of Sonia Gandhi to Islamabad in December.

While Ms Gandhi is regarded as the most powerful leader in India today, that fact itself is expected to help create the appropriate atmosphere for her proposed visit at the invitation of the Pakistani leadership to succeed, sources said.