Pakistan and Britain have decided to set up a joint working group to deal with terrorism, much on the lines of the anti-terror mechanism Islamabad recently agreed upon with India.
A joint statement issued at the end of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to Pakistan on Sunday said Blair and President Pervez Musharraf have agreed to strengthen the regular dialogue between the two countries through the setting up of a Joint Working Group between the Interior Ministry in Islamabad and the Home Office in the UK.
The working group would strengthen cooperation on counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, illegal immigration and transnational organised crime.
The first meeting of this working group will take place in Islamabad in January 2007, it said.
Well before Blair's arrival, the Pakistan government showcased the joint mechanism on terrorism, agreed during the recent Indo-Pak foreign secretaries-level meeting in New Delhi, where the two sides decided to form a three-member committee headed by an additional foreign secretary from both sides.
The other two members would be drawn from home ministries and intelligence agencies.
Blair also paid "tribute to the statesmanship of President Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in seeking to resolve outstanding issues, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan," the statement said.
Blair noted the progress that has been made by both leaders since the establishment of the Composite Dialogue in January 2004 and welcomed the meeting of the two foreign secretaries as part of that process on November 14.
He expressed his hope that the joint mechanism (on terrorism) established in Havana on 16 September would yield concrete results.
Blair offered Musharraf UK's full support in "countering terrorism, including exchanges on forensic training, investigating the financing of terrorism, and the sharing of crisis management expertise."
For this purpose, he said, UK would deliver two MI 17 helicopters to Pakistan Anti-Narcotics Forces in April 2007 for use in their anti-smuggling operations, particularly along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
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