The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to visit India and Pakistan this month, according to officials in New Delhi and Islamabad.
A senior government official in New Delhi on Thursday said that the U.S. secretary of State will be in India on June 23 and 24, adding that Afghanistan will be one of the core topics of discussion between New Delhi and Washington during the meeting.
"They (the Americans) have repeatedly said that they welcome India's role in Afghanistan... They would like to see it go forward," AFP quoted the unidentified official as saying.
"We would like to get from the secretary a better idea of what the American plans are," said the Indian official.
During a weekly press briefing in Islamabad, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry said that the U.S. secretary will be visiting Islamabad in the last week of this month.
Confirming Kerry's visit to Asia, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki on Thursday said that the secretary is looking forward to visiting Pakistan and India at an appropriate date.
Not disclosing the details of Kerry's trip to the region, the spokesperson said that Washington has a strong, ongoing dialogue with Islamabad regarding shared interests and bilateral relationship between the two countries.
"We will work together to address any of these concerns," said the spokesperson.
Though Islamabad is Washington's key ally in its fight against Al-Qaeda and war in Afghanistan, the Pakistan government earlier had called upon the U.S. government urging it to end the U.S. drone strikes targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda groups in northwest Pakistan, where a number of Pakistani civilians were said to be the casualties of these strikes
However, after winning the May election, Nawaz Sharif told foreign journalists that he would offer "full support" to the U.S. as Washington vowed to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan by next year.
