Pak links trade to Kashmir

NEW DELHI: Pakistan prime minister Shaukat Aziz on Tuesday reiterated that Kashmir was the `key dispute’ between India and Pakistan and linked free trade with India to progress on the issue of Kashmir. Mr Aziz, who will hold bilateral discussions with prime minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday, did not raise the issue of Kashmir at the Saarc summit but at an interaction with the media he reiterated the Pakistani position that Kashmir was the ``core issue’’ that needed to be resolved.

At the Saarc summit, Mr Aziz, however, was cautious and talked about the importance of removing `the trust deficit’ that was hampering co-operation in the region and building mutual trust and confidence and building inter-dependencies.

He acknowledged that political environment in south Asia was ``vitiated by disputes and mistrust.’’
But at an interaction with the media later, Mr Aziz said that ``trade is linked to progress on Kashmir.’’ But at the same time said that Saarc needed to move from paper to implementation.

Mr Aziz had also raised the Kashmir issue before arriving here for the summit and had said that SAARC has a lot of potential but that dispute resolution, particularly on Kashmir was a ``must to realise this potential.”

He said on Wednesday that Pakistan believed that resolving the key issue of Kashmir would lead to an improvement in the overall atmosphere and that resolution of Kashmir was important for expanded ties with India. “Kashmir is the core issue. People may not like us to say this. But that is the reality,” Mr Aziz said.

Mr Aziz, however, indicated that there was some movement forward in the dialogue process including Kashmir. He said the two countries are engaged in “public and not in public” referring to back channel diplomacy where the two sides are discussing various proposals for resolving the Kashmir issue. Mr Aziz said that the proposals included joint control, self governance and joint consultative mechanism. He added that Siachen and Sir Creek were also part of the discussions.

``We are getting there... Things are moving. It is a process. We are moving step by step,” he said, and added, “Trust deficit is reducing. We need to work together to reduce it further... We want to make it zero,” Mr Aziz said.

One of the outstanding issues in SAARC has been of Pakistan refusing to extend SAFTA benefits to India. Most of the SAARC leaders talked about the importance of full implementation of SAFTA, but the likelihood of any movement on this issue seemed remote with Pakistan linking trade to resolution of the Kashmir issue. He, however, said that trade ties between India and Pakistan were growing and that bilateral ties were also more cordial than before.

Another issue of disagreement between India and Pakistan has been on tackling terrorism as a regional problem. This manifested itself in SAARC with Pakistan objecting to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with an extradition clause , which was proposed by India. Mr Aziz said, ``I think, these treaties are bilateral matters and are best handled bilaterally.’’