Pakistan Intelligence Chief to visit US Wednesday

Head of Pakistan's premier intelligence agency Lieutenant General Zaheer ul-Islam is to pay an official visit to the United States next Wednesday. He will hold talks in Washington on August 1-3 with his CIA counterpart, a military statement said. Lieutenant General Zaheer ul-Islam, "will visit USA from 1st to 3rd August. This will be a service-to-service bilateral visit," the statement said. "He will meet his counterpart General David Petraeus, director CIA," it added. The short statement gave no other details, but a senior Pakistani security official earlier said that the pair would discuss counter-terror cooperation and intelligence sharing. Islam would also demand an end to US drone attacks against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and again ask for the means for Pakistan to carry out the attacks instead, the security official said. It is the first time in a year that the chief of the Pakistan military's powerful ISI will make the trip, signaling a thaw in relations after US troops found and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011.