‘No trade talks held with Pakistan’, says Indian FM Jaishankar

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Wednesday that there have been no talks on trade with Pakistan since last year. In response to a reporter’s inquiry at the Indian embassy in Washington, a top Indian diplomat said that neither side [India and Pakistan] had made any proposal to resume trade. He pointed out that India never stopped trading with the neighboring country. “Their [Pakistani] government has taken a step to stop the trade in 2019.” “Our concern was that they never granted us MFN [Most Favored Nation] status even though we granted it to them,” Jaishankar added. “Each country has a sovereign right to make its own decisions…about what its international obligations and responsibilities are. We can have our own views on that,” he concluded. Pakistan severed ties with India after the Modi-led government unilaterally changed the special status of India’s illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) in August 2019 – a decision Islamabad believed undermined the environment for negotiations between the neighbours. Islamabad linked its decision to the normalization of relations with New Delhi with the restoration of the special status of the IIOJK. Despite frosty relations, the two countries have agreed to renew a 2003 ceasefire agreement along the Line of Control (LoC) in February 2021. Last August, the State Department had categorically stated that there were no talks between Pakistan and India to resume bilateral trade. The then FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch cited India’s illegal and unilateral actions at the 2019 IIOJK as the reason for the suspension of bilateral trade. “This situation remains intact,” she emphasized. However, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government has expressed willingness to review trade ties with its arch-rival, with its president Nawaz Sharif hoping to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the near future. “I have always been in favor of good relations with India,” Nawaz said last year during an interview with Indian journalist Barkha Dutt, expressing hope that there was an opportunity to revive the relationship. “It would be great if Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi also attends the SCO summit. I hope he and we will have an opportunity to sit together in the not-too-distant future,” the former prime minister said. Earlier in 2023, Nawaz emphasized the need to improve relations with neighbours, including India and Afghanistan, noting that two Indian prime ministers – Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999 and Narendra Modi in 2015 – had visited Pakistan during his tenure. The PML-N president also congratulated Modi on his re-election as the Prime Minister of India for the third time.