Talks on talks likely

After many flip-flops, the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will sit down on Tuesday for a bilateral meeting to ''talk about talks.” Both sides have been pretty guarded about making any preevent announcements regarding this long-awaited meeting that is now scheduled to take place on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process, the regional summit on Afghanistan.

There was a brief announcement from the Pakistan foreign office that their foreign secretary Aizaz Chaudhury will lead his country's delegation, and accompanied by a declaration: “The Pakistan delegation will also hold bilateral meetings with other leading delegations attending the meeting.”

The Indian side confirmed the meeting but kept other details under wraps. There were indications that the two sides will explore ways and means to resume the comprehensive bilateral dialogue. The Pathankot terror attack issue would also be on the table, and the return visit of the NIA team to Pakistan would also be discussed. It is essentially being described as the meeting that would discuss the way forward.

The Heart of Asia conference is scheduled for late Tuesday afternoon, and the timing of the foreign secretaries would depend on the schedule of the Pakistani delegation. But there is little doubt that bilateral meeting between India's foreign S Jaishankar and his counterpart Aizaz Chaudhury would

overshadow this multilateral event. In fact, the ground work for this meeting was laid when foreign minister Sushma Swaraj met her counterpart Sartaj Aziz on the sidelines of a similar “heart of Asia” conference held in Islamabad in December. At that time, the proposed foreign secretary levels talks were to take place sometime in January in Islamabad. But then the Pathankot terror attack took place and talks got derailed. There have been several statements that have not exactly added any positive flavor to the dialogue process, and thus the Indian side is pretty wary of the next move.