President Asif Ali Zardari has told an Indian daily that his country will like to develop an economic zone with India on the pattern of the European Union. The proposal has come on the heal of the various bold statements he has been making since he took PPP’s affairs in his hands after the demise of his spouse, Benazir Bhutto, last December.
“Pakistan’s future lies in good ties with India,” he said in an interview with Tehelka early this year. This was his first ever statement on India as the co-chairperson of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). “India should play a bigger role. Being the bigger power in the region, it carries a larger responsibility because any upheaval, any Balkanisation, any Talibanisation, any warlords --like situation in Pakistan would directly affect India,” he said, while elaborating his point.
Zardari believes Pakistan will essentially benefit from good relations with India. Friendship means opening up of borders; people will interact and trade will flow bringing down the cost of production and raising the purchasing power of the people. Indian banks can provide necessary credit to Pakistani entrepreneurs, while sharing research in health, agriculture and industry, which has its own benefits.  
“Islamabad and New Delhi should help people move more freely across the border. Current visa restrictions should be replaced by passport-free travel, with regular travellers given a special card to ease passage,” Financial Times, an Indian daily, quoted him last Saturday.
His interview with an IBNLive correspondent, Karan Thapar, after recent general elections, made headlines in Pakistani and Indian newspapers. In this interview, he laid down the strategy to remove the atmosphere of fear surrounding the two countries and talked about creating economic interdependence between the two countries to build up trust.
Zardari’s confidence to give new direction to the South Asian politics through putting economy and people’s welfare first before politics had surprised Indian analysts and policy-makers alike. The surprise came when he accepted India’s position that terrorists were operating inside Kashmir. He has emphasised the need that the parliaments of the two countries should come forward to do justice with the Kashmiris.
Right after emerging as the largest political party of Pakistan, the PPP leadership had openly said that it did not want hostile relations with the eastern neighbour. The PPP co-chairperson went to the extent that his party did not deem India as a threat and was ready to visit the country along with his to-be prime minister.
Kashmir has been the cause of conflicting relations between the two, but Asif Ali Zardari had once said that his government was ready to take a back seat on the issue for a while and further economic ties instead. He said that the settlement of the Kashmir issue could be delayed at least for ten years. Such statements were widely hailed in Delhi to the disenchantment of the Kashmiri groups and their sympathisers in Pakistan.
As for as removing Indian fears is concerned, Mr. Zardari has said that India has never been a threat to Pakistan and it too needs not to be afraid of its neighbour. In his recent statement, he has proposed declaring South Asia as a nuclear free zone. Mr Zardari has said that Pakistan will not be the first to use nuclear weapons against India.
Since the beginning of the peace process, that India initiated and termed as non-reversible during Vajpayee regime, the volume of bilateral trade has significantly increased but Pakistan has yet to reciprocate neighbour’s initiative of giving it the Most Friendly Nation (MFN) status.
The religious right has stood in the way of good neighbourly relations, but resistance has almost died down now. Pakistan hopes to act as a corridor to facilitate Indian trade with Central and West Asia. It, too, is willing to help the neighbour import gas from these regions to cater to its development needs.
Besides accumulating the benefits of transit trade, Pakistan also hopes to promote tourism by showcasing its 5000 years old civilisation, having attraction for the entire major religious groups — Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Muslims etc.
The sources of rivers feeding Pakistan also lie with India. Cooperation on this respect will ensure the steady growth of agriculture the backbone of country’s economy. Given the shortage of water in Pakistan, questions are being raised vis-à-vis the rationality, even legality, of the Indus Basin Treaty that gave India complete rights over three eastern rivers.
While India is growing at 8 per cent in terms of GDP and the whole world is looking for active and meaningful interaction with this South Asian giant, Pakistan can’t remain hostage to the policies of the past.
When confrontation has proved useless, cooperation can be tried with the best intentions. It is probably what Mr Asif Ali Zardari means right now. India is likely to respond the moves positively given its own energy and trade needs that Pakistan has offered to fulfil. He has rightly raised the question as to why India can’t trade with Pakistan as it is trading with China.
Surprisingly enough the president happens to be the only person who is talking so genuinely vis-à-vis improving ties with India. The foreign ministry has yet to translate Zardari’s vision into policies and the official media has to change its language accordingly. The curricula taught in government-run schools and colleges need to be re-adjusted with the emerging Look-East policy of Pakistan.
India is one of the largest neighbours, which shares historical ties with Pakistan. The two countries have won independence from the same colonial power, the United Kingdom, but have stood hostile to each other during most part of their existence. Pakistan has fought three wars with the neighbour and the last caused its break up in 1971.