ISLAMABAD: Secretary-level talks between Pakistan and India will be held in the near future, said Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah on Thursday, adding that deliberations between the two countries were going on in this regard.

The secretary-level talks were expected to start in mid-January, but were put off in the wake of the attack on the Indian air base in Pathankot. Islamabad condemned the strike and has offered to help in the investigations.

“The meeting is going to be held in the near future and both sides are in touch in this regard,” Mr Khalilullah told a weekly briefing at the Foreign Office.

Asked whether Pakistan will be sending a team to Pathankot, he said the interior ministry would advise on the ongoing investigations.

In reply to another question regarding the recent visit of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia and Iran, the spokesman said the aim was to “reduce tension between the two countries and both sides have given a positive response”, as indicated by the prime minister in his talk with media in Tehran on Tuesday.

He told the briefing that Pakistan was in touch with both Riyadh and Tehran over the appointment of focal persons.

Responding to another query about cooperation with Russia on the 1,100-kilometre north-south gas pipeline from Lahore to Karachi, he said the minister for petroleum and natural resources, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, was currently in Moscow and the project was part of his agenda.

Pakistan and Russia inked an agreement in October last year, under which Russia would invest $2 billion in the project, which has a capacity of 12.4bn cubic metres per annum. It will connect Karachi’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals with those in Lahore.

On the talks between Western powers and Iran over the nuclear issue and the subsequent lifting of US sanctions, Mr Khalilullah said it would augur well for peace and stability in the region.

“Pakistan welcomed the Joint Compre­hensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the P5+1 and EU on July 14, 2015.”

Pakistan’s relations with Iran will also get a boost in various fields, especially trade and banking transactions, as a result of the removal of sanctions, he added.

The spokesman told the briefing that there was no “organised presence” of the militant Islamic State group in the country. He said that many people had been arrested on various charges, for which the interior ministry would be a better source of information.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2016