MULTAN, Oct 30 Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said the government will consult the parliament on the Pak-US Strategic Dialogue.

Talking to journalists at Multan airport on Saturday, the foreign minister said the report on the strategic dialogue would be tabled in the National Assembly for a discussion. He said the US was taking more interest in the strategic dialogue and announced that it would provide five-year security assistance to Pakistan to meet its defence needs.

Qureshi said the energy sector was on top of the 13 sectors discussed during the strategic dialogue with the US and Pakistan conveyed its desire for a civil nuclear deal to the American administration. He said Pakistan wanted access to civil nuclear technology to meet its growing energy needs. He said Russia was a big power in the region and there was a massive scope for strategic relations between Islamabad and The Kremlin.

The foreign minister said Pakistan wanted to improve its relations with Russia and officials of the two countries were holding meeting in this regard. “A couple of months ago, President Asif Ali Zardari visited Russia and met Russian officials. Later, a meeting of foreign ministers of the two countries was held to improve the ties,” he said.

Qureshi said Pakistan and Britain had agreed on a framework for a strategic dialogue, which would bring together key policymakers from both sides. He said only Pakistan would decide about a military operation in North Waziristan and added that Pakistan was making serious efforts to eliminate terrorism from the region. He said meetings among the president, the prime minister, the chief of army staff and the foreign minister were nothing more than a routine matter.

Qureshi said Pakistan wanted to normalise its relations with India by settling the decades-long Kashmir dispute. He said the entire world criticised human rights violations by Indian forces in occupied Kashmir.

KHURSHID SHAH Federal Minister for Labour and Manpower Syed Khurshid Shah said on Saturday the contribution of overseas Pakistanis to the foreign exchange had increased to $9 billion.

Speaking at a Meet-the-Press programme at the Multan Press Club, Shah said overseas Pakistanis were contributing $5 billion in terms of remittances to the foreign exchange in the past, but now this amount had increased to $9 billion.

He said a technical institution was being set up with a cost of Rs800 million in Islamabad with the financial assistance of Saudi Arabia. He said 1,500 people would get technical education from this institution every year.