Milestone in Indo - Pak Relation.

First India-Pak Foreign Secretaries meet after Mumbai Terrorist attack.

ISLAMABAD: Foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will address a joint press conference later on Thursday after their talks aimed at bridging the trust deficit between the two countries.

Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir will address the joint press conference at the Foreign Office here, sources said.

The decision was taken after their meeting this morning. Earlier, there was no indication of the joint press conference, they sources said.

The foreign secretaries met here on Thursday in their efforts to bridge the trust deficit and work out measures to counter terrorism to bring on track the stalled peace process.

Nirupama Rao is the first senior Indian official to visit Islamabad since the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The talks began with a one-on-one meeting between Rao and Bashir to be followed by delegation-level parleys.

Rao and Bashir have been tasked by Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani to find ways to bridge the trust deficit and prepare the ground for a meeting of the Foreign Ministers on July 15.

Ahead of the talks, Rao on Wednesday said that the visit was a kind of exploration for reducing trust deficit that exists between the two countries.

Noting that Indo-Pak relations have seen ups and downs and tremendous levels of difficulties for the last 60 years, she said: "We are going there with a clear-eyed understanding of these difficulties and there complexities."

She underlined that the core concern of terrorism was high on her mind as she approaches the talks.