A National Investigation Agency (NIA) team will visit Pakistan to further probe the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Punjab's Pathankot earlier this year, the central agency announced today."We told them we want to send a team to Pakistan. They have welcomed the idea," NIA Director General Sharad Kumar said.


The NIA visit to the neighbouring country follows a similar exercise by Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which visited Pathankot earlier this week to probe the attack on the IAF base in which seven security personnel were killed.


On Thursday, the JIT quizzed suspended Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh, his cook Mandan Gopal, jeweller friend Rajesh Verma and other witnesses at the NIA headquarters in New Delhi.Singh had claimed that he, Verma and cook Gopal were abducted by four or five heavily armed terrorists near Punjab's Kolia village on January 2.


The terrorists later attacked the Pathankot airbase in which seven security personnel and six terrorists were killed.India has accused Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar of being the mastermind of the attack.


Meanwhile, at the United Nations on Thursday, China, in a dramatic move, once again blocked India' bid to ban Azhar and put him on a terror list.


The UN had banned JeM in 2001, but India's efforts to ban Azhar after the Mumbai terror attack also did not fructify as China, one of the five permanent members of the UN group with veto powers, didn't allow the ban apparently at the behest of Pakistan.