ISLAMABAD, June 28: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will visit Afghanistan in the third week of July, it is learnt through diplomatic sources. “The prime minister will make a one-day trip to Kabul most probably on July 20,” an official source told Dawn on Tuesday.

Significantly, it would be his first bilateral visit to Afghanistan as prime minister.

The visit would take place soon after the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Economic Commission meeting which is scheduled to be held in Kabul in the second week of July, the sources said.

The last top-level visit to Afghanistan from Pakistan was by President Gen Pervez Musharraf in November 2004.

Officials here say the prime minister’s visit would improve the diplomatic atmosphere marred by the recent verbal antagonism from Kabul.