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Pakistan announces India visit

April 2, 2012

President Asif Ali Zardari has announced that he will meet with India's prime minister Manmohan Singh over the weekend. It would be the first trip of its kind since 2005, as the nuclear neighbors seek improved relations.

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Asif Ali Zardari
Image: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP/dapd

Pakistan's presidential office announced on Monday that Asif Ali Zardari intends to visit India on April 8 for talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, though officials stressed that the meeting would be an informal one. Referring to the trip primarily as a "private visit for prayers" at the shrine to Sufi Muslim saint Hazrat Khwaja Gharib Nawaz in Ajmer Sharif, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar also said Zardari would meet with Singh.

"The president has also accepted the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for lunch in New Delhi en route to Ajmer Sharif," Babar said.

Zardari's office also said that the president would return to Islamabad on the same day.

Since gaining independence from British colonial rule in 1947, neighbors India and Pakistan have fought three wars and carried out near-simultaneous nuclear tests in a 1998 show of strength. The government in New Delhi froze peace talks with Islamabad after the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008, with India and the US blaming the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba group.

Relations between the nuclear neighbors first showed signs of improvement last year, when the peace dialog slowly restarted. Paksitani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani also accepted a 2011 invitation from Singh to watch the two countries' beloved cricket sides clash in the World Cup semi-final in India.

msh/rc (AFP, Reuters)