By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari says he proposes to start a fresh peace dialogue with India after the Indian elections are over later this month.
“Democracies have never gone to war. No Pakistani democratic government has gone to war with India. We’ve always wanted peace. We still want peace with India,” Zardari told CNN in an interview Tuesday.
“I’m waiting for the (Indian general) elections to be over so that all of this rhetoric is over and I can start a fresh dialogue with the Indian government,” he said.
Zardari was responding to a question whether what President Barack Obama called Islamabad’s “obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan” was indeed “misguided”.
Zardari said Pakistan also wanted a commercial relationship with India. “We want a commercial relationship with them. I’m looking at the markets of India for the industrialists of Pakistan and hoping to do the same.”
Asked about US concern that most of about $10 billion provided by US to Pakistan since 9/11 has been used to beef up its arsenal against some sort of threat from India, Zardari said: “Let’s say they’ve given $10 billion in 10 years, a billion nearly a year for the war effort in-against the Taliban, and the war that is going on.”
Zardari is in Washington to meet US President Barack Obama in a trilateral summit with the Afghan President Hamid Karzai Wednesday. The trilateral meetings would continue Thursday.