ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said his country was willing to engage with neighboring India for the “sake of prosperity and development,” the state-run APP news agency said on Wednesday.
Sharif’s remarks came during a visit to Astana, Kazakhstan, while addressing the sixth Summit of Conference for Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) on Tuesday.
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought three wars, mainly over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir.
In 2019, they engaged in an aerial battle in which Pakistan brought down an Indian jet. People-to-people contact between the countries, formed by a split of British India in 1947, virtually ended after the 2019 clashes.
In August 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi withdrew Indian-administered Kashmir’s autonomy in order to tighten his grip over the territory, provoking outrage in Pakistan and the downgrading of diplomatic ties and suspension of bilateral trade.
“We are willing to engage with India for the sake of prosperity and development as both sides of the border cannot afford to deal with massive challenges of poverty and unemployment amid meager resources,” Sharif said. “Onus remains on India to take a necessary step to engage toward the result-oriented solutions.”
“I want to leave behind a legacy of peace and progress for the prosperity of the coming generations of our region,” the PM said. “Pakistan’s first priority at the moment is to revive a rapid and equitable economy”.
The PM called out India for its “unabated atrocities” in Indian-administered Kashmir: “India has become a threat to its minorities, neighbors and the entire region.”
Sharif said he was “absolutely ready and willing for a discussion with Indian counterparts to promote trade and investment provided they showed the sincerity of purpose.”
Last month, in an interview with a French TV channel, Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari called engagement with India “untenable for us, particularly the unilateral illegal actions of August 2019.”
“All of this creates very little space for us to engage,” Bhutto Zardari had said.
