Islamabad and New Delhi have issued assignment visas to each other’s diplomats after a gap of around 28 months as both sides are seeking to normalise ties that have been on ice since 2019.<\/p>\n
Pakistan and India have issued a large number of assignment visas to each other’s diplomatic staff in recent weeks, the Express Tribune reported.<\/p>\n
Both countries have issued visas on all applications submitted by March 15 this year.<\/p>\n
Pakistan issued visas to 33 Indian officials, while seven Pakistani diplomats received assignment visas from India.<\/p>\n
Sources said there was a possibility of an agreement between Pakistan and India to issue visas on assignment applications by June 15.<\/p>\n
The two countries are likely to issue more visas to each other’s diplomats after that.<\/p>\n
All countries issue assignment visas to diplomats and embassy staff from other countries.<\/p>\n
In January this year, top intelligence officers from the two countries held secret talks in Dubai, reopening a back channel of diplomacy aimed at a modest roadmap to normalising ties over the next several months, the report said.<\/p>\n
Later in February, the two countries’ militaries announced an unexpected joint ceasefire.<\/p>\n
The UAE’s envoy to Washington confirmed in April that the Gulf state was mediating between India and Pakistan to help the nuclear-armed rivals reach a “healthy and functional” relationship.<\/p>\n
Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba said in a virtual discussion with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution that the UAE had played a role “in bringing Kashmir escalation down and created a ceasefire, hopefully ultimately leading to restoring diplomats and getting the relationship back to a healthy level”.<\/p>\n
“They might not sort of become best friends but at least we want to get it to a level where it’s functional, where it’s operational, where they are speaking to each other,” he added.<\/p>\n
In March this year, Chief of Amy Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa called on India and Pakistan to “bury the past” and move towards cooperation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Islamabad and New Delhi have issued assignment visas to each other’s diplomats after a gap of around 28 months as both sides are seeking to normalise ties that have been on ice since 2019. Pakistan and India have issued a large number of assignment visas to each other’s diplomatic staff in recent weeks, the Express […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main-stories","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10123,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122\/revisions\/10123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}