*ISLAMABAD*: Pakistan on Tuesday rejected Indian media reports thatCommerce Minister Pervaiz Malik has agreed to attend World TradeOrganistation (WTO) meeting upon India’s invitation, saying that theministry takes such decisions in consultation with the Foreign Office andno such decision has been taken so far.
“It has yet not been decided if he will be able to attend the meeting,which will take place in Delhi on March 19-20,” Commerce Ministry’sspokesman Muhammad Ashraf said in a press statement.
“No such decision has been taken in this regard,” the press statement added.
Talking to a private media outlet, Ashraf emphasised that the ministrytakes such decisions in consultation with the Foreign Office. Theconsultation usually takes place if there is a plan to go to attend theforum. Since there is no such plan to attend the meeting, so no suchconsultation has taken place so far, he added.
“Bilateral trade ties are linked with comprehensive dialogue. While theprocess [of comprehensive dialogue] is stalled since long then what is thepoint to attend the informal meeting?” “Malik will not attend the meetingas per the decision in place at this point of time,” he added.
India has invited Pervaiz Malik to participate in the informal WTOministerial meeting taking place in Delhi.
The invitation to Malik comes in the wake of the late-December secretback-channel negotiations between the two national security advisers, AjitDoval and Nasser Janjua, and takes place after the global Financial ActionTask Force (FATF) threatened to isolate Pakistan over the weekend if itdidn’t stop using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.
As the decision to participate in the SAARC summit, to be held in Pakistan,comes up again for consideration by the Centre — India and several otherSouth Asian nations had refused to go last year, ensuring a cancellation ofthe summit — Delhi is planning a more nuanced Pakistan policy than it hasbeen seen since the Pathankot attacks two years ago.
Diplomatic sources from Pakistan and India have confirmed that the twosides have decided to undertake an exchange of all their prisoners in theirrespective jails. They will soon begin this exercise by releasing the “mostvulnerable”, that is, women and children and mentally disturbed prisoners,some of whom languish behind bars after long outliving their originalsentence.
As many as 50 “vulnerable” prisoners are said to be living in pitifulconditions in Indian and Pakistani jails.
This most obvious of humane steps will now be carried out alongsidetargeted measures already being undertaken to control militancy inside IoKas well on the Line of Control and the international border.
However, under pressure by the international community to “reach out” tothe Pakistani government and its civil society, Delhi has withdrawn itsobjections to participating in multilateral meetings with Pakistan.
On Friday, Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar stood alongsideAfghan president Ashraf Ghani, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi andTurkmenistan President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, at theTurkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline inauguration ceremony andcalled it a “peace pipeline” that will deliver both gas and peace to thetroubled South Asian region.
But the decision not to contaminate every international meeting with theirpublic quarrels, both over Kashmir and terrorism, was taken by Pakistan andIndia at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Kazakhstan lastJune, thereby reassuring all other participants that the SCO would not behijacked by its newest members.
Delhi even hosted a four-member team from the Pakistani security andintelligence establishment — including its director-general in charge ofcounter-terrorism in the Pakistan foreign ministry — from January 31 toFebruary 2 in Delhi, along with similar delegations from other SCOparticipating nations.
The invitation to the Pakistani commerce minister should be seen in thatlight, diplomatic sources said. Sartaj Aziz, then foreign affairs advisor,was the last Pakistani leader to visit India in December 2016 for the Heartof Asia conference on Afghanistan in Amritsar.
Clearly, as the NDA government enters the final year of its term in office,a re-evaluation of its Pakistan foreign policy seems to be on the cards.Delhi realises that it cannot bank only on the US to put pressure on therest of the world to make Pakistan fall in line — just as it did in theFATF plenary in Paris over the weekend — but must also take steps toassuage its friends and partners that it is also “seen to be doing”something.
But Delhi is fervently hoping the FATF crackdown will force Pakistan to acton its own longstanding demands to take action against Hafiz Saeed, thealleged mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, as well as its operationalleaders, like Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi.
The government has made it clear that the prime minister’s participation inthe SAARC summit in Pakistan later this year will be dependent on theaction Islamabad takes against those accused in the Mumbai attacks.