Sharif still has a soft corner for India

PM tells Pak’s envoy to Delhi that Pakistan is keen to develop good relations with India on basis of sovereign equality

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Wednesday that Pakistan is keen to develop good relations with India on the basis of sovereign equality.

“Pakistan is keen to develop good relations with India on the basis of sovereign equality as well as mutual respect and interest,” Sharif said during a meeting with Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit at the PM House.

Basit briefed the prime minister on the state of Pakistan and India relations with particular reference to latest developments.On Tuesday, the premier said that Pakistan’s enemy wants to sabotage the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.

“A neighbouring country has already voiced its reservations,” Prime Minister Sharif told an all parties conference (APC) at the Governor House in Quetta.  By ‘a neighbouring country’ the premier meant India which has long been accused by Pakistani civil and military leaders of fomenting terrorism in Balochistan and elsewhere in the country as part of its attempts to destabilise Pakistan. Recent statement by Indian cabinet ministers that New Delhi must ‘neutralise terror with terror’ lent credence to such accusations.

Islamabad believes India’s top spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), is out to perpetrate terrorism in Pakistan by arming and bankrolling terrorists as New Delhi wants to undermine the ambitious CPEC project which, Islamabad says, will be economic ‘game changer’ for the region. India doesn’t hide its opposition to the multibillion-dollar project as its foreign minister Sushma Swaraj said on Monday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has conveyed to Beijing that the CPEC is ‘unacceptable’ to New Delhi.