WASHINGTON - The United States on Monday welcomed the weekend talks between President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Indo-Pakistan issues, with the hope that more such contacts would take place in future also.
‘We are very pleased that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Zardari had a chance to meet in New Delhi on Sunday and that Prime Minister Singh has accepted President Asif Ali Zardari’s invitation to visit Pakistan in the near future’, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said.
The meeting in the Indian capital between the leaders of the two nuclear powers took place during President Zardari’s private visit to a revered sufi saint’s Mazar in the Indian city of Ajmer.
‘As we have said for a long time, we believe that expanded and improved engagement between these neighbours are not only going to help the (two) neighbours, they are going to help the entire region and provide opportunities for millions of citizens in the neighbourhood to live in a more secure and stable region’, the spokesperson said at the daily briefing.
The US, she said, appreciates the hopeful trend in Pakistan-India engagement towards improved bilateral relations.
‘So we applaud the trend. We hope that India and Pakistan are going to build on this progress and we look forward to more such meetings’, she added.