Grossman's visit to Islamabad depends on Pakistan's assent for talks with US: State Department

Washington, Jan 22 (ANI): US Special Envoy Marc Grossman will visit Pakistan only when the Pakistanis are ready for talks with the United States on a multi-faceted bilateral relationship, the State Department has said.

Grossman, who was recently in Afghanistan, wanted to visit Pakistan for consultations on exploratory talks with the Taliban but Islamabad asked him to postpone the visit, The Dawn reports.

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said that Pakistan was still reviewing its relationship with the US.

"Right now they are still going through their internal review about where they want to go in our bilateral relationship, so the visit is premature. So it was on that basis that he decided not to go. We never got to the stage of submitting visas or any of that," she said.

"They did not judge that it was timely to have these conversations, but they did make clear that they want to do it at a future date, and frankly, we need to give them the space that they need to work on their issues so that we can have a good set of meetings when they are ready," Nuland added.

She further said that the Pakistan Foreign Office had also expressed the desire to rebuild a multi-faceted relationship with the US. She pointed out that the relationship with Pakistan had continued despite the problems the two countries had faced after the Nov 26 NATO raid on Pakistani border posts.

"Our ambassador and our Embassy are in contact with the Pakistanis on a daily basis. Our civilian assistance is continuing to flow. Our full range of programmes that we do on economic support, infrastructure, all of these, educational things are going forward," she added. (ANI)