Pakistan on Tuesday said a meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh would be useful to revive composite dialogue and fast track bilateral issues but made it clear that it is not expecting any major breakthrough.
AQ Khan, a controversial scientist known as the father of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear programme, passed away here on Sunday after a brief illness. He was 85.
India is observing the sixteenth anniversary of the Kargil War this week.
Abbasi will be sworn-in in later at a special ceremony at the President's House.
Bhutto was killed in a gun-and-bomb attack during an election campaign rally on December 27, 2007 outside the Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi.
Mehbooba said there was a huge difference between former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee's regime and the current one under PM Narendra Modi.
Prime Minister Khan, in his address, said Pakistan will never fight any other country's war in future and his government's foreign policy will be in the best interest of the nation.
Shehbaz, the 70-year-old younger brother of former three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has served as chief minister of the country's most populous and politically crucial Punjab province thrice.
Pakistan's powerful army chief has stepped in to mediate between the embattled government and the protesters seeking resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, bringing the military back into the centre stage and signaling a possible end to the high-political drama.
With its new army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa set to take charge, Pakistan has asserted that focus will remain on country's eastern border with India, even as the US nudged Islamabad to keep the pledge of not allowing use of its soil for terror attacks against neighbours.
Former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh believes that Nawaz Sharif could have been aware of Pakistan army's aggression in Kargil in 1999 despite the insistence by the then Pakistan prime minister that he did not know about it.
The only possible solution to the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan is to create a situation where the "lines while in existence" become "irrelevant", Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said in an interview published on Sunday.
A report in a daily said that Pakistan was worried over the visit as it could have serious implications on strategic stability in the region.
The 68-year-old former first lady was diagnosed with lymphoma (throat) cancer in August 2017.
Pakistan Army on Wednesday withdrew a tweet that had rattled the civilian government over a media report about a rift between them over combating militancy in the country.
Khan's government will be the third consecutive democratic government in Pakistan since 2008.
She said Modi has the mandate to take bold decisions on the lines of Atal Bihari Vajpayee for the resolution of the problems in and around Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan's ruler Pervez Musharraf and his top diplomats made a U-turn on talks with India after the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee released Hurriyat leaders in early 2000 as part of his peace initiatives on Kashmir, according to a declassified US cable.
The newly-elected National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, is meeting to elect the prime minister.
Abbasi will run the government until Sharif's brother Shehbaz is elected as member of parliament
Only on Wednesday, in his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Modi said he wants to resolve the Kashmir issue through Vajpayee's doctrine of "Insaniyat, Kashmiriyat, Jamhooriyat" - a testimony to the former PM's lasting legacy.
It is most unlikely that the US would take kindly to Indian claims of having shot down an F-16. There is too much commercial interest involved, says Col Anil Athale (retd).
Authorities arrange helicopters to shift Sharif to jail; 300 PML-N workers arrested.
'Already, there is talk of a possible extension for Raheel Sharif in the context of his perceived sterling, but incomplete work in the war against terror, as also the cleansing of crime and extortion networks in Karachi,' says Rana Banerji.
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan on Friday night said he told Prime Minister Narendra Modi to expect sabotage by "vested interests", but stressed that talks between India and Pakistan should go on "uninterrupted".
The recent breach of ceasefire by Pakistan was aimed at infiltrating Lashkar-e-Tayiba cadres into Jammu and Kashmir ahead of the polls and to bring Kashmir issue back into limelight, as the neighbouring country was feeling isolated with the growing clout of India in the international forum, according to security experts.
Through its early days to the 1980s, Pakistan sought to expand its sphere of Islamic influence through Afghanistan to Central Asia and got Pakistani citizens recruited in the Afghan government institutions in the 1990s when the Taliban were power. Now, it is looking eastward through India to Bangladesh and Myanmar to establish an imaginary caliphate.
Pakistan's new Army Chief has begun setting the stage to act against groups like LeT and JeM
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Pundits in Pakistan and also some western diplomats are predicting that the next army chief will be forced, partly by institutional pressure and partly by circumstances, to indulge in some tough talking with the civilian leadership. How the civil-military equation settles in this sort of a situation is something that will determine the future of Pakistani politics, and also Pakistan's relations with rest of the world, says Sushant Sareen.
By weakening Sharif, the corps commanders could have a final say in important matters like relations with India, dealing with Taliban militants, interacting with Americans and once again achieving strategic depth in post-NATO Afghanistan. Which is why they may be behind the unrest in Pakistan led by Imran Khan and Dr Tahirul Qadri, says Shahzad Raza.
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The eternal question remains unanswered, what price security and what cost liberty, says Vikram Sood.
India can stay relevant in Afghanistan not by being a bystander but by actively bolstering anti-Taliban forces monetarily, militarily and politically, say Lt Gen R K Sawhney and Sushant Sareen
After weighing all the costs and benefits, the next administration is likely to reduce and restructure assistance to Pakistan but not to end it altogether, says Daniel S Markey.
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