Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif may meet his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in Washington later this month on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit, a top aide to Pakistan Premier said on Tuesday.
"There are chances of meeting between the two (prime ministers)," Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Affairs Advisor to Sharif, told PTI.
"There are possibilities, when they are here (in Washington DC). They would interact with each other. Whether there would be a structured meeting I do not know. Depends on...Chances are there (for a meeting)," Aziz said.
The top Pakistani diplomat is in Washington to attend the sixth US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue which he co-chaired with Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday.
Aziz said Sharif would be travelling to Washington to attend the Nuclear Security Summit at the invitation of US President Barack Obama.
Modi too has been invited to the Summit on March 31 and April 1.
No official announcement has been made yet.
Responding to a question on the status of India-Pak relationship after Modi came to power in May 2014, Aziz said in the first year the situation was "not good".
"But the last two months are better," Aziz said.
Ahead of the Modi-Sharif meeting, Aziz said there is likelihood of a meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two countries.
The timing of which has not been decided yet, he noted.
"We do not know (when foreign secretaries would meet). He (Indian Foreign Secretary) has to come to Islamabad first. We are hoping that now," Aziz said after the breakfast meeting with Defence Writers Group in Washington.
Identifying the "strategic and conventional imbalance with India" as the topmost security threat to it, Pakistan on Tuesday rejected America's call to reduce or cap its nuclear weapons arsenal, believed to be the fastest growing in the world.
"I think (Pakistan's top) security concern is strategic and conventional imbalance with India," the Pakistan prime minister's advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz told Defence Writers Group in a breakfast meeting this morning.
Terrorism comes only after that, he said.
"Terrorism is something our own domestic (concern). It is overflow of terrorism from Afghanistan that becomes the second (top security concern for Pakistan) within our borders, which hopefully we would be able to control it in the next few years," he said, responding to a question on what was Pakistan’s top security concern or threat.
Aziz also ruled out America’s desire that Pakistan reduce or cap its fast expanding nuclear weapons arsenal and put the onus for it on India.
"If India does (caps its nuclear weapons program) we would think about it," he said when asked at this point of time Pakistan is not thinking of capping or reducing its stockpile of nuclear weapons, as asked by the United States.
"But if India does not, how can we cap?" Aziz asked.
"I think, it is important for Pakistan to really process that reality and put that front and center in its policy," he said in an apparent reference to the reports that Pakistan has the fastest growing stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world.
The nuclear and non-proliferation issue is among the six topics that was discussed during the sixth US-Pak Strategic Dialogue co-chaired by Kerry and Aziz here on Monday.
"Our nuclear program is a deterrence. It is India which is expanding its nuclear arsenal at a much faster rate than we are," Aziz alleged.
"The concept of deterrence is a dynamic one. Deterrence has to be effective and our deterrence is India centric. If India would not have started its nuclear program, we would have never done this," he said.
"India is developing its nuclear stock. Its ability after the (civil nuclear) agreement with the United States to divert more stocks to it, more fissile materials to nuclear weapons has increased much more," he claimed.
