The guessing game can go on, but with barely a fortnight to go before the results of parliamentary elections are declared, Pakistan has signalled its readiness to restart the dialogue process with India after a new government is formed in Delhi later in May.
Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s advisor on foreign affairs and national security, has said his country is ready to talk to any government elected by the Indian voters, including one headed by Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. “We are ready to do business with any leader, including Modi,’’ Aziz said in a telephone interview to the Hindustan Times amid a raging controversy about Pakistan’s Interior Minister’s Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s recent remarks that Modi, if he becomes the prime minister of India, will destabilise regional peace.
Indicating Islamabad’s readiness to engage a likely Modi dispensation in Delhi, Aziz underlined that the last time there was any real progress between the two neighbours was “under a BJP-led government with Vajpayee as PM.’’
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Peace with India was Nawaz Sharif’s poll plank and he launched his peace mission immediately after becoming the PM. In fact, he told me that he was taking up peace as a poll issue so it will help him once he comes to power.”
“We had a good start with Manmohan Singh and now look forward to restarting the dialogue once a new government is in place in Delhi,” Aziz said.
In a similar vein, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit said his country would like to make a “new beginning” with India and would engage with whosoever comes to power after the elections to develop better relations, particularly on bilateral trade. “We are very interested in the stability and peace of this region,” the envoy said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Mumbai.
“We hope whoever the new government is in New Delhi, we can engage quickly and comprehensively and meaningfully.”
“We have no view of that. It would be like jumping the gun. We will willingly and readily engage with the new government, whoever heads it,” said the envoy when asked about Pakistan’s view of Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate.
Underscoring the importance of better relations with India, the envoy amplified on what he described as “Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s vision.” “We are very interested in the stability and peace of this region. Our priority is the socioeconomic development of Pakistan. The relationship with India is particularly important because of the long history of war.”
Providing a glimpse into the trajectory of bilateral relations in days to come, the envoy stressed that trade is the number one area where both of the countries could work together. “Both sides could reduce their list of items on which tariffs were imposed. And both sides could reduce non-tariff barriers to trade, including visa regimes, banking facilities and communication issues.”
Pakistan has been prevaricating on granting the long-delayed decision to grant India Most Favoured Nation status allegedly due to pressure from the powerful military establishment, which is widely seen to set the agenda for the India-Pakistan relations.
In case the BJP-led NDA government is formed later this month, it is expected to be tough and uncompromising on cross-border terror, but will be open to expanding economic ties which have not taken off due to the forbidding trust deficit between the two subcontinental neighbours.
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