Pakistan finds Sino-India trade template attractive

NEW DELHI: India and Pakistan on Sunday emphasised the need to widen ties beyond trade and cover investment and other matters, while expressing satisfaction over progress in economic ties.

Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, in his talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here on Sunday, argued that an improvement in economic ties between the two countries could not be held hostage to the irritants, and cited the Sino-India template to drive home his argument. Economic relations between China and India have been on the upswing, notwithstanding the delay in the settlement of the long-pending border disputes. The Pakistani president cited this as the role-model for betterment of ties between his country and India.

Singh and Zardari, in deliberations held before lunch, concurred on the need to tap economic dynamism of the two countries and the need for positive movement in the direction of liberalising trade. India has been pitching for the Sino-India model in talks with Pakistani interlocutors for a long time, a model endorsed by Beijing, but Islamabad had not responded enthusiastically as its political establishment saw Kashmir as the 'core issue' that needed to be resolved before trade normalisation could take place. In that sense, strategic experts here noted a subtle shift in Pakistan's stance on the broader ties between the two countries. In keeping with this change its position, Pakistan, in the past few months, has granted India the Most Favoured Nation status.

The Sino-India model, according to an official, could facilitate smoother ties between the two sides as it underlined a more grounded approach to work steadfastly towards improving economic ties that could serve the two countries while taking a long-strategic range view to resolve complex outstanding issues like Kashmir.

Despite the decades-long boundary dispute, India and China, the two rising Asian powers, have managed to scale up bilateral ties to over $70 billion and set an ambitious target of $100 billion by 2015. In contrast, bilateral trade between India and Pakistan stood at a mere $ 2.7 billion, with trade balance heavily in favour of India.

Singh emphasised this new spirit of pragmatism in ties with Islamabad after his talks with Zardari. "We are willing to find practical, pragmatic solutions'' to all issues covering their ties, he said, "and that's the message that president Zardari and I would wish to convey.''

After years of negotiations, home secretaries of India and Pakistan are set to sign a visa liberalisation agreement soon, which will ease travel between people of the two countries. In recent times, both countries have toughened their visa rules. "The prime minister expressed appreciation of the fact that Pakistan has moved forward on trade-related issues,'' foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai told newspersons later. He said that the issue of improving trade relations has been discussed by the commerce ministers and commerce secretaries, and there is a way forward that has already been identified.