BackIndia, Pakistan note progress in improving trade
India, Pakistan note progress in improving trade
PremiumDiplomatic overtures: Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari (left) shakes hands with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Sunday. Zardari was on his first visit to India as head of stat
New Delhi: India and Pakistan acknowledged the progress achieved in improving trade, but the Indian side insisted that a real forward movement in bilateral ties would be judged by action taken by Islamabad on terrorism.
As an incentive to Pakistan to move forward on other disputes bedevilling ties for more than six decades, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Sunday that he had accepted an invitation to visit Pakistan.
The last visit by a Pakistani head of state to India was in 2005 by then president Pervez Musharraf.
Singh hosted a lunch for Zardari at his residence in New Delhi that was attended by senior cabinet ministers, Sushma Swaraj and L.K. Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party, besides Congress party general secretary Rahul Gandhi.
Later, briefing reporters, Indian foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai said Singh and Zardari had a 40-minute meeting before the lunch and Singh had described it as “very constructive and friendly", and Zardari described it as “fruitful".
Mathai said the leaders noted the “steady progress" made in the dialogue restarted last year—referring to the talks resumed in February last year, more than two years after they were interrupted by the 2008 Mumbai attacks. At least 166 people were killed when 10 gunmen belonging to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group targeted multiple locations in India’s financial capital and left bilateral ties in tatters.
Singh “expressed satisfaction at the fact that Pakistan has moved forward on trade-related issues", Mathai said in a reference to Pakistan recently unveiling a plan to dismantle trade barriers for exports from India. “Both leaders felt we must tap into the considerable potential of bilateral economic and trade ties."
Trade between India and Pakistan stands at $2.7 billion, while indirect trade through third countries is estimated to be much higher.
It was noted at discussions over lunch that India and Pakistan should adopt the approach followed by India and China to normalize ties—move forward on trade as both sides try and sort out a vexatious border dispute, said a person close to the development, who declined to be named.
Terrorism
On terrorism, however, the divergence of views between India and Pakistan was clear.
Mathai said terrorism was a subject “which is a major issue by which Indian people will judge progress in the bilateral relations".
Singh told Zardari that “it was imperative to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice and prevent activities aimed against India from Pakistan. In this context, the Prime Minister also mentioned the activities of Hafiz Saeed", Mathai said, referring to the chief of the LeT, who had a $10 million bounty placed on his head by the US last week.
India accuses Saeed, 62, who lives in Pakistan as a free man, of masterminding the Mumbai attacks. The Indian government says it has handed over various pieces of evidence highlighting Saeed’s involvement in terrorist activities in India, which have been dismissed by Pakistan as insufficient to convict or detain him.
Mathai said that Zardari had told Singh that “the matter needed to be discussed further between the two governments".
Zardari, on his part, highlighted the need to sort out key border issues, Mathai said. These included delineating the maritime boundary in a riverine estuary between Gujarat and Pakistan’s Sindh province, demilitarization of the Siachen glacier in the Himalayan mountains where Indian and Pakistani troops have faced off against each other since 1984, and the issue of Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan in its entirety but administered by both in parts. The region has been the cause of three of the four wars between India and Pakistan since 1947.
“Both felt we needed to move forward step by step" on resolving these issues, Mathai said, stating that Singh had accepted an invitation to visit Pakistan “at an appropriate time".
Pakistan has been seeking a visit by Singh for a while, with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani urging Singh to visit the country during a brief exchange on the sidelines of the second Nuclear Security Conference in Seoul last month.
Singh later told reporters that he had agreed to visit Pakistan, but sought a “solid" breakthrough that both countries could celebrate. On Sunday, when asked if Singh had changed his stance articulated in Seoul, the person close to developments said “there was no qualitative difference" and that the dialogue underway should be used to make “solid enough progress for the Prime Minister to visit".
Security analyst C. Uday Bhaskar noted that the way the response to the invitation was worded gave India the flexibility to interpret the timing of the visit. “India has also made it clear that normalization of ties would be linked to the efforts made by Pakistan to rein in terrorism," he said.
elizabeth.r@livemint.com
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