Islamabad, Mar 3 (UNI) India and Pakistan will sign a vital pact on 'visa regime liberalisation' at the end of the forthcoming foreign secretary level talks scheduled to be held here on March 13-14 to kick-start the fourth round of composite dialogue between the two countries.
The agreement on visa regime liberalisation will allow the two sides to do away with the current city-specific flow of people. The pact is designed to allow unrestricted travel anywhere in the two countries, the Nation reported.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and his Pakistani counterpart Riaz Muhammad Khan would lead the two sides.
''Under the agreement, India and Pakistan will increase the number of visa counters from the existing two to three and will issue over one thousand visas daily to businessmen and tourists,'' a source said.
After the introduction of new visa policy the citizens and businessmen from both the sides would get a seven-day open visa with no restrictions on visiting a particular city or place, he added.
According to sources, India and Pakistan may sign two more agreements on preventing incidents at sea and quick return of inadvertent border crossers.
Those two agreements, they said, were supposed to be signed during the visit of Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri to New Delhi last month, but were put off owing to the inability of the two sides to remove some minor differences.
Pakistan will urge their Indian counterparts in the foreign secretaries' meeting to focus more on efforts for the resolution of major issues on the composite dialogue agenda such as Kashmir instead of focusing on terrorism and security related matters.
''Pakistan believes it's time that the two sides move towards the resolution of issues as it has been over three years now since the commencement of peace process in 2004, but there has been no serious efforts to settle the major issues,'' the sources said.
UNI
The agreement on visa regime liberalisation will allow the two sides to do away with the current city-specific flow of people. The pact is designed to allow unrestricted travel anywhere in the two countries, the Nation reported.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and his Pakistani counterpart Riaz Muhammad Khan would lead the two sides.
''Under the agreement, India and Pakistan will increase the number of visa counters from the existing two to three and will issue over one thousand visas daily to businessmen and tourists,'' a source said.
After the introduction of new visa policy the citizens and businessmen from both the sides would get a seven-day open visa with no restrictions on visiting a particular city or place, he added.
According to sources, India and Pakistan may sign two more agreements on preventing incidents at sea and quick return of inadvertent border crossers.
Those two agreements, they said, were supposed to be signed during the visit of Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri to New Delhi last month, but were put off owing to the inability of the two sides to remove some minor differences.
Pakistan will urge their Indian counterparts in the foreign secretaries' meeting to focus more on efforts for the resolution of major issues on the composite dialogue agenda such as Kashmir instead of focusing on terrorism and security related matters.
''Pakistan believes it's time that the two sides move towards the resolution of issues as it has been over three years now since the commencement of peace process in 2004, but there has been no serious efforts to settle the major issues,'' the sources said.
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