WASHINGTON: Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir is expected to arrive in Washington in a few days for talks aimed at ironing out the differences that have adversely affected US-Pakistan ties, diplomatic sources told Dawn.The talks will precede the next round of the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue in Islamabad that will be attending by a high-level US delegation headed possibly by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“Both sides felt the need to have preparatory talks before next month’s dialogue,” said a diplomatic source.

The third session of the ministerial-level dialogue was held in Washington on Oct 20-22 with the intention of transforming the bilateral relationship into a broad partnership reflecting shared democratic values, mutual respect, trust, and interests.

The dialogue also led to the creation of 13 working groups that work upon action plans and delineate achievable benchmarks.

But the process hit a snag with the arrest of a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, for fatally shooting two Pakistani citizens in Lahore on Jan 27.

The month-long dispute was resolved on March 16 when a court in Lahore allowed Mr Davis to leave Pakistan after paying blood money.

“Yet, we felt that we need to have more talks before we restart the dialogue process,” the diplomatic source said.

Meanwhile, a US State Department official has rejected the suggestion that the United States had withdrawn some security personnel from Pakistan since Mr Davis’s arrest who was accused of running an underground CIA cell in the country.

“We were – in the days immediately following the resolution of Mr Davis’s case – certainly on heightened security awareness,” the department’s deputy spokesman Mark Toner told a briefing in Washington. “But there has been no measure to reduce our footprint in Pakistan.”

Mr Toner insisted that both sides were “getting back to business as usual” after resolving the Raymond Davis dispute.

The US, he noted, also had resumed its programmes that seek to promote cooperation between the two governments and with the Pakistani people. Mr Toner described the US agenda behind this cooperation as building Pakistani institutions and capacity to bring greater economic prosperity and political freedom there.

He also rejected the suggestion that Pakistan had given the US a list of US military and security personnel that Islamabad was going to declare persona non grata if Washington failed to withdraw them.