India, Pakistan foreign secretaries may meet in Feb

Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao is likely to meet her Pakistani counterpart in Bhutan's capital next month, India's foreign office said on Sunday, as the two nuclear-armed neighbours try to take forward a stalled peace process.

The ties between the two South Asian countries plummeted after the 2008 Mumbai attacks which killed 166 people and derailed a sluggish four-year-old peace process with Pakistan. The meeting is likely to take place on the margins of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) standing committee meeting at Thimphu on February 6 to 7, the foreign office statement said. Last week, Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said he expects his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi to visit India by March. The two countries' prime ministers, interior ministers and foreign ministers all met last year, but failed to revive the peace process.