3rd round of Pak-US strategic talks next week

Pakistan will push for a civilian nuclear deal with the United States on the lines of the one with India at their strategic dialogue scheduled to be held in Washinton, DC, next week, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The newspaper added, too, that the US is unlikely to give in to the demand, and that Islamabad knows it. It also quoted a US official as saying that the issue was not on the agenda but it could easily be raised.

A Pakistani official told WSJ that Washington, DC, 'considers India its biggest ally. That's why our demand gets rejected.'

PTI adds: The United States and Pakistan would hold their third ministerial-level Strategic Dialogue in Washington, DC, next week, against the backdrop of America pushing Islamabad to act firmly against terrorist safe havens and step up relief efforts in the wake of the devastating floods in the country.

At the dialogue spread over three days -- from October 20 to 22 -- the high-profile Pakistani delegation would be led by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and would include army chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, while the US delegation would be headed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"In Washington next week, the third high-level meeting of the Strategic Dialogue between Pakistan and the United States (will be held), an example of our ongoing, broad partnership with Pakistan," State Department spokesman P J Crowley said at his daily news conference.

"Foreign Minister Qureshi will be in DC along with Secretary Clinton to receive reports from the various working groups that will chart progress in the full range of issues that we have in our relationship with Pakistan. But one of those will be, obviously, to continue to assess Pakistan's long-term needs given the flood of earlier this summer," Crowley said.

Noting that the floods is the new reality, Daniel Feldman, deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said everything will be seen through the prism of floods.

"But we also have such important policy work to be done in those committees, we didn't want to turn it just into a floods meeting. So there will also be a separate floods meeting during the course of that strategic dialogue," he told reporters early this week.

This will be the third ministerial-level strategic dialogue meeting this year, he noted. "We had the first one in the spring in Washington, the second one in July in Islamabad, and then the third one in DC -- really almost unprecedented in the degree of high-level engagement and representation between the two countries," he said.

"There will be a very, very strong Pakistani delegation, a number of ministers, and we will have many of our 13 working groups meeting next Wednesday and Thursday, co-chaired by US, either secretaries or undersecretaries and Pakistani ministers, and then culminating in the plenary on Friday," he said.

The next round of the strategic dialogue is also being held against the backdrop of the Obama administration asking Pakistan to take more concrete action against the al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in its restive tribal belt.