Basit hopes Modi's Pak visit will touch issues beyond SAARC

Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit on Wednesday hoped that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to his country during the next SAARC meet would go beyond SAARC issues.

"The next summit will be in Pakistan and we hope that it will be a huge success because all SAARC leaders will be there. We have already started preparing for that summit and we hope that Modi's visit to Pakistan will add more to it beyond the SAARC issues," Basit said.

The high commissioner was speaking at an interactive session with the MCC Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

He said the foreign secretary's visit to Pakistan was very positive as the two countries' leaders were able to interact after a certain gap.

"We at Pakistan think this visit will lead to some tangible results in resuming the dialogue process and sooner the better I will say," Basit said.

He said both countries should talk and India should feel comfortable in taking forward the dialogue process.

"If India feels it is not yet the right time to talk, we can wait...but we will like to see this engagement to resume as quickly as possible. We will also like to feel comfortable to talk to Pakistan," Basit said.

"We are also not in a hurry in that sense. But, we have to know we are two important countries in this region and by not talking they are not doing any service to our coming generations. Perhaps, we had failed in bringing our two countries together, but we should not let our future generations to fail on this behalf," he said.

Basit said, "We owe it to our posterity to work seriously in removing problems between our two countries and work seriously towards normalising relations. This is an historic opportunity because the leaderships on both sides are committed to development agenda, to peaceful agenda. So, this is a time to explore all possibilities."

On trade, he said if non-tariff barriers could be removed, the bilateral trade volume could expand to USD 15-20 billion from just a mere USD 2.7 billion now.

Basit pointed out that issues like visa, lack of bank branches and a conducive political environment were holding the inherent potential of both countries from being harnessed.

However, Basit said, he remained optimistic about the future and pointed out that it was just a matter of time before the non-discriminatory market access status was extended to India. It would help the two neighbours have a level-playing field.

India had extended the Most Preferred Nation Status to Pakistan way back in 1996.