'New Silk Road provides opportunity for Indo-Pak trade growth'

CHENNAI: The United States' strategy of 'New Silk Road,' an initiative to link the countries in South and Central Asia, provided "an enormous opportunity" to grow economic relationship between India and Pakistan, a senior American diplomat said today.

The initiative, a modern version of the fabled trade routes in the region, was unveiled by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently for the economic development of Afghanistan.

"The idea of the New Silk Road (NSR), as Secretary Clinton said, is to develop the connections between and among the states of South and Central Asia... To take a region, which is in geo-strategic terms, historic terms and cultural terms, a single coherent entity but were historically, levels of commerce and exchange have been very very low," Geoffrey R Pyatt, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the South and Central Asia Affairs Bureau told PTI here.

Underlining the fact that India's global imports last year were over 330 billion USD of which Pakistan accounted for less than one percent, he said "There is an enormous opportunity to grow that relationship, which we believe will help to grow market to creat economic opportunities in both countries."

Acknowledging India's successful commercial relationship with Sri Lanka, he said, "We are also interested in looking farther to the north. How do we embed Afghanistan in this story of Indian economic dynamism."

The US was also interested to "connect the resource endowments of Central Asia, because, the oil, other resource endowments with the fast flowing consumer driven markets of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh."

Stating that the New Silk Road was about creating a vision and a concensus among the countries of the region, Pyatt said "It's time to put aside some of the differences of the past and to work together to create economic opportunities."

NSR's vision was a "secure, stable and prosperous Afghanistan at the heart of a secure, stable and prosperous region," he stressed.

Asked how NSR will work on countries which had different viewpoints, Pyatt observed that "If you take a longer approach to history, in cultural terms, this is a single region. There is a greater opportunity to revive that."