ISLAMABAD, Feb 9: Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Aziz Ahmed Khan will arrive here on Saturday for top-level consultations to finalise agenda for Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh's first bilateral visit to Pakistan next week.

The Indian Minister of External Affairs is scheduled to visit Pakistan from Feb 15 to 17.

High Commissioner Aziz Khan is expected to brief the prime minister, foreign minister and other top government officials about the Indian External Affairs Minister's forthcoming visit.

"He (Aziz Khan) will apprise officials concerned here about the general mood and thinking in New Delhi on the on-going Indo-Pakistan peace process and confidence building measures(CBMs), particularly the proposed Trans-Pakistan gas pipeline and Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service," a foreign ministry source told Dawn.

Pakistan believes the gas pipeline project should be driven by pure economics not politics just as the proposed bus service ought to be driven solely by the wishes of the Kashmiri people on both sides of the divide. It considers them both as extremely important CBMs that hold the promise of peace dividends.

High Commissioner Aziz Khan was quoted last week as saying that the Kashmir bus service would start very soon, indicating that some serious behind-the-scene negotiations were going on between the two countries. However, when Dawn checked with a senior foreign ministry official here, his response was that the High Commissioner had been "quoted out of context".

According to informed sources the proposed Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service would be a major talking point at the foreign ministers' meeting here next week. Last year when Mr Natwar Singh was asked by a reporter what would happen if the technical-level talks on the proposed bus service in Delhi failed, he said in that case the issue would be taken up at the two foreign ministers' level.

Mr Singh's visit assumes special significance after a planned meeting between Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Dhaka last week was put off due to the postponement of the 13th Saarc Summit.

This will be the first high level contact between the two governments after Prime Minister Aziz's meeting with his Indian counterpart Dr Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Nov 24, 2004. Also, this will be the first meeting between the two foreign ministers after the breakdown of bilateral talks on the Baglihar dam dispute last month and the subsequent referral of the case by Pakistan to the World Bank.

The Indian External Affairs Minister's visit will take place ahead of the first expert level Indo-Pak trade talks scheduled to be held in Delhi on Feb 22.

Apart from holding wide-ranging talks with his host Foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri, Mr Natwar Singh would also call on Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and the President Pervez Musharraf during his stay here, officials said.

Diplomats say that Mr Singh is likely to carry a message for Pakistani leaders from the top Indian leadership.