Islamabad: Pakistan and the US have agreed to revive their strategic dialogue and raise it to the ministerial level, with the fourth round to be held here in October during the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi will co-chair the dialogue.
"The US decision to have Clinton as co-chair of the dialogue marks the upgradation of talks as far as Washington is concerned," Dawn reported on Friday.
"The notion that the US viewed its relations with Pakistan through the Afghan prism was further reinforced when Pakistan's request for holding the fourth round of the strategic dialogue was cold shouldered at least on two occasions this year," the newspaper added.
This apart, after the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as the US special envoy for the region, most of the Pakistan-US interaction was channelled through his office, it noted.
The inaugural Pakistan-US strategic dialogue was held in Washington in April 2006 and was co-chaired by Pakistan's then foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and then US under secretary of state Nicholas Burns.
The decision to launch the strategic dialogue under Pakistan-US strategic partnership was taken during the March 4, 2006 summit talks here between then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and his then US counterpart George Bush.
IANS
First Published: Friday, August 21, 2009, 14:04