By IANS,
Islamabad : The Pakistan Army is a stakeholder in the dialogue process with India, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has said, adding the most favoured nation (MFN) status has been granted to New Delhi.
Khar told mediapersons in Lahore Saturday that the MFN status to India was given with the approval of the federal cabinet on the assurance that New Delhi would waive non-tarrif barriers as part of the dialogue process.
She said New Delhi had assured Islamabad that it would not block Pakistan’s way in Preferential Market Access by the European Union unlike in the past, reported the Associated Press of Pakistan.
She said the army was a stakeholder in the dialogue process with India, and that all institutions in the country supported the idea of improving relations with India.
Her comments followed Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s reported statement that the cabinet had only given its approval in principle to moved forward on the issue of MFN status.
India granted the MFN status to Pakistan in 1996 but Islamabad did not reciprocate — until Pakistan Information Minister Firdous Awan made the announcement four days ago.
Asked about the Kashmir dispute, the foreign minister said Pakistan desired result-oriented dialogue with India. The country had achieved much more than expected during the dialogue process.
She said that stability in the region was of primary importance to Pakistan as its role was proactive in building relations with neighbouring countries.
Khar said: “Promoting relations and enhancing economic as well as political ties with countries like Turkey, Afghanistan and India are the cornerstone of country’s foreign policy.”
Calling the country’s membership of the UN Security Council (UNSC) an achievement, she said it had dispelled the impression that Pakistan was isolated internationally.
Pakistan’s proactive role in the sixth summit dialogue in Turkey as well as the trilateral dialogue in Afghanistan was another proof of Pakistan’s desire to promote regional peace, said Khar.
Meanwhile, The News International Sunday hailed the grant of MFN status to India, saying it “can lead to a peace dividend”.
“A workable and acceptable deal to openly trade with India has been precluded by concerns about the consequences that normalising trade relations with India could have on Pakistan’s security.”
It said that an addition in this saga of “misplaced insecurity relates to the granting of MFN status to India”.
Referring to seemingly contradictory statements from Gilani and Firdous, the paper said there was “no doubt that incoherent, contradictory signalling and statements from different quarters have created avoidable confusion”.
It went on to say that granting MFN status to India would strengthen Islamabad’s case for the “removal of non-tariff barriers, a major source of the current inequity in bilateral trade between the two countries, which mostly accrues to Pakistan’s disadvantage”.
It said MFN status would reduce informal trade between Pakistan and India and generate more revenue and create incentives for Islamabad to improve the quality of its products to compete with Indian imports.
Trade between India and Pakistan, currently at around $2.5 billion, is expected to double over the next three years with the MFN status to India.
“The normalisation of economic relationships can lead to a peace dividend,” the paper added.