What the cabinet did on Wednesday was to agree in principle to give the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India. The announcement was made presumably with an eye on the SAARC summit being held from November 9 to12, where Gilani and Singh will both be present. The Indian PM has now taken the initiative to send an invitation to Gilani for a meeting on the sidelines of the summit. The talks between the two, after the Khar-Krishna meeting in July, will hopefully take the much needed peace process a step forward.
What remains to be done now is to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Details related to the decision have however to be worked out in the right spirit. What has to be kept in mind is that at no other time in the past was Pakistan so badly in need of normalising relations with its neighbours. What must not be forgotten at the same time is that Pakistan still has serious differences with India which need to be resolved in the interest of peace in South Asia. This alone can create a win-win situation for the two estranged neighbours. Fears are being expressed that Indian goods would swamp Pakistan’s market elbowing out the local industry. The critics of the MFN need to be reminded that the SAFTA agreement already contains a list of 233 sensitive items which would not be allowed from India. This is besides another negative list which safeguards a number of Pakistan’s products which are less competitive than Indian products. There are also complaints that certain Pakistani goods are debarred from the Indian market through Non Tariff Barriers (NBTs). The commerce secretaries from the two countries have to sort out the issue through necessary flexibility when they meet on November 14-15 in New Delhi.
Pakistan needs to take all stake holders on board to find out a workable solution to any genuine problem that might be caused by according the MFN status to India. Minor issues can be ignored with the hope that they too would be redressed once the relations between the two countries are back on track.
without solution of prior intensive disputeslike kashmir, water etc MNF would not be durable as the same satus in 1996 ,was given to pakistan by india but of no use………….
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