Pak-India visa agreement soon

New Delhi: India and Pakistan are likely to sign a landmark visa agreement here this month as soon as the relevant officials of the two countries finalise dates of mutual convenience. According to Home Ministry sources, the officials have already finalised the draft of the agreement that would liberalise the visa regime between the two countries marred with traditional rivalries. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik would lead the Pakistani delegation and would also sign the agreement on behalf of Islamabad. His Indian counterpart P. Chidambaram would sign the agreement on behalf of the government of India. According to the sources, the visa agreement signing here would be followed by the exchange of Judicial Commissions. Therefore, the sources pointed out, the signing of the milestone agreement would depend on the success of the visit of the Commission from India to Islamabad. Pakistan and India resumed dialogue process in February last year that was stalled after the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks. At the end of December last year, talks on conventional and nuclear CBMs were held in Pakistan. Pakistani cabinet also give approval to allotting Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India. But experts said that any agreement on multiple visa regime between the two countries would be a major breakthrough as far as history is concerned. Earlier, in October last year, two-day meeting of Joint Working Group of Pakistan and India concluded in New Delhi on firming up of a draft of their bilateral visa agreement that will liberalise travel between the two countries. The agreement seeks to ease travel for the nationals of the two nations who desire to visit the other country, said a joint press statement issued by the two sides after the second meeting of the Working Group. The two sides finalised the draft text of the agreement, which would be submitted to the respective governments for obtaining necessary approvals to ratify it. The meeting was a follow-up on the deliberations held in the first meeting of the Joint Working Group in Islamabad from June 2-3 in 2011. According to sources, the draft text provides for hassle-free visa procedure for the businessmen from either country. It also provides for more than three destinations for visit in each country to the travellers from India as well as Pakistan. During the talks between the foreign ministers of the two countries in June last year, the two sides had prioritised building strong people-to-people contacts as a key part of their relationship and decided to accelerate their negotiations for concluding a visa agreement. Jan 2012