NEW DELHI – Leading Pakistani political parties have pledged to promote peace with New Delhi in their manifestos ahead of the elections next month with the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) even proposing to do so by linking India with Afghanistan besides energy rich Iran and Central Asian Republics (CAR) via its territory.
The proposal of PML (N), whose leader and two-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is among the frontrunners for the country’s top post, is significant as Islamabad has long resisted allowing transit trade between India and Afghanistan fearing New Delhi’s is using Kabul to encircle it strategically. India is a leading regional donor having invested $ 2 billion primarily in Afghan infrastructure development.
“Pakistan can also develop a flourishing transit economy because it provides the shortest land routes from Western China to the Arabian Sea, through the Gwadar Port, while linking India with Afghanistan and CAR and providing land route from Iran to India and access to the Central Asian Republics to the Arabian sea and India for oil/gas pipelines,” the PML (N) said in its manifesto.
The manifesto of Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf ( PTI), widely expected to give PML (N) a tough fight, echoes its rival party in part. “Progressive detente with India will benefit both countries if centred on conflict resolution and cooperation especially in the field of energy.”
It lists the resolution of Kashmir dispute as part of Pakistan’s core national interest while pledging not to allow the country’s territory or people, including its armed forces, to be used by any nation for the promotion of its political ideology or hegemony or promoting terrorism and for destabilizing any state.
The party recognizes terrorism as a growing internal destabilize while promising to move substantively on the bilateral strategic dialogue with India besides rationalizing the defense spending.
Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) that ruled Pakistan between 2002 and 2007 too recognizes threat to national security “from unconventional sources” and no longer “an issue of defending the country against foreign military aggression from across the border (India)”. It calls for “zero tolerance policy for any non-state actors to plan, organise, train or launch military attacks against any of Pakistan’s neighbours”. It says Pakistan can no longer use the argument of “absence of the writ of the state in ungoverned spaced parts of Pakistan” as an excuse as this means “abdication of a fundamental responsibility for happenings within our territorial jurisdiction”.
The manifesto of Pakistan People’s Party, which last month became the first party to complete its term in office, takes credit for initiating a policy of sustained dialogue with neighbours like India while pledging to pursue stability and peace-building in the region as a policy priority.
It counted normalization of trade with India, which Islamabad had resisted for years in favour of its Kashmir-first policy, among the important achievements of its government replacing old templates that “hinged strategic ties on narrow definitions of national security”.
Comments are closed.