NEW DELHI, 25 November 2004 — Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said yesterday that his country wanted peace with India and the two subcontinent neighbors had the best chance now to achieve it.
He insisted it was time for peace in a region dominated by enmity between the nuclear-armed rivals so that the pundits of gloom and doom could be proved wrong.
“After nearly half a century of acrimony and tensions, Pakistan-India relations are now at a historic crossroads,” Aziz said in a speech to top Indian business leaders, speaking a few hours after meeting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh amid an often-stumbling peace process.
“With sincerity and courage born out of the conviction that our destinies are indeed intertwined, both countries can open a new chapter of friendship and cooperation,” he said.
Aziz, in India during a regional tour as the outgoing chairman of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC, repeatedly insisted that peace was possible between the two nations.
“If India takes a step forward, Pakistan will respond by two,” he said in his speech. “Let us both prove the pundits of gloom and doom wrong.”
Aziz also played down recent tough talk by both sides, a flare-up that began after Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf raised the possibility of major changes in the way Kashmir — the disputed Himalayan region at the root of decades of Indo-Pakistan distrust — is governed.
Musharraf’s comments, made to Pakistani reporters and not through diplomatic channels, set off a back-and-forth of increasingly belligerent comments.
But Aziz said there had been no lasting damage. “The discussions and the options listed by the president of Pakistan were merely on the basis of discussions within Pakistan,” he told reporters after meeting with Manmohan. “No proposals were ever presented and no reaction was expected from India.” He said he and Manmohan had discussed the peace process and “the core issue” — Kashmir.
While he was fairly conciliatory on Kashmir after meeting with Manmohan, he made tougher comments during his speech, saying “it is time to accommodate in full the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.
This is an imperative of justice, history and democracy.”
Yesterday, India also expressed a commitment to peace. “This path on which both have decided to walk together will yield results in the future,” said Shyam Saran, a top Foreign Ministry official.
Along with the peace process, the two prime ministers — both respected economists — also focused on trade.
The two countries agreed yesterday to reopen branches of state banks in each other’s country, Saran told reporters. India and Pakistan had closed those branches after the 1965 Kashmir war.
While Indian officials had repeatedly warned ahead of the meetings that they did not expect any diplomatic breakthroughs, both countries hoped it would extend the good will gained since January as they have eased visa restrictions and resumed diplomatic contacts.
Yesterday, during a meeting with India’s oil minister, Aziz revived an eight-year-old proposal to build a pipeline through Pakistan to link India with Iran’s massive gas fields.
But Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer remained noncommittal on the plan, insisting it be linked to overall progress in trade and economic ties.
— Additional input from agencies
