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Sunday, August 21, 2011
Pakistan key to realising Central-South Asia trade dream: US
WASHINGTON: Pakistan lies at the heart of tremendous trade prospects between Central and South Asia and Pakistan-India relationship will also be integral to realising regional economic integration, a senior US official said.
“One of the things that we would like to work on more over the next few months and years is to increase the amount of trade and investment in the whole region – this concept of a new “Silk Road,” of an economic region integrated from Central Asia all the way to New Delhi – maybe even to Bangladesh. Who is at the center of that? The center is Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the Obama Administration’s special representative Marc Grossman said.
In an interview with Voice of America, Grossman envisioned “a day when goods will move back and forth from Central Asia to India, through Afghanistan, through Pakistan.”
“What will that do? It will increase jobs, it will increase the capacity of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan to make choices about their own lives in the economic sphere.
I think that’s extremely important - market access, more goods, more investment, more jobs - these are things that are extremely important to both Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
Another important part here, he noted, is the “relationship between India and Pakistan, because clearly, as goods and services and people move up and down this Silk Road, they also need to move successfully between India and Pakistan.”
He described the work the Indian and Pakistani commerce ministers have recently done together as “very positive.”
“Some of the other ministers, including the foreign ministers, who have met – if we can continue to see that kind of progress between India and Pakistan, it will also be a foundation for this vision, this idea of economic integration running from Central Asia to India, or even actually to Bangladesh.”
On US-Pakistan relations, he noted, Pakistan and the United States had had a relationship for a long time.
“Like in all relationships, sometimes it’s better, sometimes it’s worse.
But our job now is to see if we can’t get back to basic principles between Pakistan and the United States. When I was there a few weeks ago, it seemed to me that the foundation for Pakistani-American relations is that Pakistanis and Americans can find shared interests, and then act on them jointly. I think that if we can follow that philosophy, we’ll do ourselves some good.”
The special envoy applauded President Asif Ali Zardari’s decision to legalise political parties for the first time in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, bordering Afghanistan.
“Obviously, the way Pakistan organises its own government is its business. As far as I’m concerned, I think that the increased amount of democracy in Pakistan, more political parties, more integration of that part of Pakistan into the rest of that society has got to be a positive thing.
“We’ve supported the civilian government there and the efforts they’re making politically, economically, democratically to move Pakistan forward. That decision is really for Pakistanis to make. But I think every time you can increase the influence of democracy, you decrease the influence of extremism.” Regarding progress in the fight against al-Qaeda in the region, Grossman remarked that the killing of Osama bin Laden in May has thrown an opportunity to now finish the militant organisation.
“What’s that going to take? It’s going to take a huge amount of cooperation from Pakistan, from Afghanistan, from countries all around the world. This is really our opportunity now to defeat this organisation.”
About prospects of Afghan reconciliation, the envoy said Islamabad had expressed its support for an Afghan-led process and the upcoming Istanbul and Bonn conferences will be important towards making progress on the issue.
“There’s one other important aspect of Istanbul and Bonn; that is the relationship between those two conferences and Pakistan, and also the relationship between Pakistan and India. In both places, we hope that Pakistan will continue to support the Afghan reconciliation. One of the most interesting developments over the past few months has been the point that the Pakistan government has supported the Afghan reconciliation.
“You’ll recall when the Pakistani government visited Kabul on April 16, they supported Afghan reconciliation, and they also proposed a core group of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the US to meet together and talk about reconciliation.” app
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk