ISLAMABAD: The remarks by Abdul Razak Dawood, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s aide on commerce, about resuming trade with India were his “personal views” and not the government’s policy, a Pakistani state minister said on Monday.
Pakistan’s cabinet last April put off allowing imports of cotton and sugar from neighboring India until Delhi reviewed its 2019 move to revoke the Kashmir region’s special status.
Earlier, in an effort to cool local demand and prices, Pakistan’s Economic Coordination Committee (ECC), the country’s top economic decision-making body, had given the go-ahead for the imports, which would have ended nearly two years of trade suspension between the nuclear-armed rivals. But the foreign minister announced the next day the decision had been deferred after a “consensus opinion.”
But Dawood last week said Pakistan needed to reopen trade with archrival India and it would be “very beneficial” for the country.
“These are Razzak Dawood’s personal views and not a decision by the government,” Farrukh Habib, the Pakistani state minister for information and broadcasting, told Arab News.
He said there had been no change in the government’s policy on trade with India.
“Obviously, the government’s policy remains the same and no such idea has come before the cabinet so far,” Habib said.
Opposition leaders and analysts termed the contradiction between the government policy and Dawood’s statement a lack of a sense of direction.
“This is a completely bipolar government that has no direction and control on its team,” Dr. Musadik Malik, a senator from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) opposition party, told Arab News.
“On one side, this government kept on saying that Kashmir is the epicenter of Pakistan’s foreign policy and on the other, their cabinet member wants to open trade with India.”
Malik said there was no “synchronization in any of this government’s steps or policies.”
“If the cabinet and the prime minister are saying that we will not do trade with India until the reversal of unilateral steps taken by them (India) on August 5, 2019 and after that Dawood is saying something else, then one should ask which government he is working for,” the PML-N senator said.
He said Kashmir had already been compromised in the tenure of PM Khan’s government and it would go further back with such statements.
“If you look into their track record, then taking a U-turn is their favorite thing so this can also be one of them,” Malik said.
Pakistan People Party (PPP) Senator Taj Haider said apart from affecting the Kashmir cause, reopening trade with India would adversely affect Pakistan as it had no major items to export to India.
“We have nothing to sell except our conscience,” Haider told Arab News.
He said the government had already put the Kashmir issue on the back burner, adding there had been no diplomatic achievement on that front and the country’s foreign policy was being run only on Twitter.
“The nation has been divided by this government on every issue, including Kashmir,” the PPP senator said. “There is total anarchy everywhere, in the government as well as the country, and no consensus on any issue.”
Faisal Karim Kundi, the PPP central information secretary and former deputy speaker of the National Assembly, said his party had always been in favor of trade relations with neighbors.
“It was the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which had been calling former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif a ‘traitor’ for maintaining good relations with India,” Kundi told Arab News. “The PPP has a clear policy and it has always wanted good relations with neighbors, including trade ties.”
He noted the PPP, during its tenure, tried to launch a gas pipeline project with Iran, though it could not be materialized. “The PPP supports Pakistan’s trade relations with any country,” he added.
Mosharraf Zaidi, a political commentator and analyst, said Dawood had a track record of issuing statements on important matters, in contrast with the stated government policy.
Pakistan maintained that there was not much to talk about and no resumption of trade, unless India addressed the situation in Kashmir and reverses at least some, if not all, the measures taken in August 2019, including restoration of the autonomous status of Kashmir, he noted.
“His (Dawood’s) statement is a contradiction of this clearly stated policy,” Zaidi told Arab News. “It is the prime minister’s responsibility to make his cabinet’s members account for repeated violations of the government’s policies.”
Another analyst, Zafar Jaspal, however, differed with Zaidi: “We have to think differently that engaging India to fulfill our national interests does not mean that Pakistan is ignoring the Kashmir issue.”
He said the two nuclear-armed neighbors could not afford a deadlock persisting for long. “Therefore, for the sake of communication and if trade is one of the options that can revive the stalled dialogue, then there is no harm in it,” Jaspal added.