ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan welcomed recent peace overtures between Pakistan and India and said it believes a peaceful neighbourhood will augur well for the war-torn country’s stability and prosperity.
Talking to ANI, a Reuters‘ partner, Afghanistan Ambassador to India Farid Mamundzay said: “70 per cent of Afghanistan trade with Pakistan happens through Wagah Attari border. If India-Pakistan relations are good, it will benefit Afghanistan and region.”
“We [the trio] can cooperate in projects like [Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India] TAPI gas pipeline, Chabahar Port, and it will bring economic prosperity for the [South Asian] region.”
“We want a peaceful neighbourhood where prosperity, tranquillity exist. Nobody benefits from insecurity and instability. We welcome developments that have a larger and positive impact on the security of the broader region,” Mamundzay added.
His statement comes a day after Prime Minister Imran Khan, in a sign of easing tensions, responded to a recent peace gesture from his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, writing in a letter to him that Islamabad also desires peaceful relations with New Delhi.
Officials said that Imran, in the letter, called for the resolution of the dispute over the Kashmir region and all other outstanding issues between the two sides.
“The people of Pakistan also desire peaceful, cooperative relations with all neighbours, including India. We are convinced that durable peace and stability in South Asia is contingent upon resolving all outstanding issues between India and Pakistan, in particular, the Jammu & Kashmir dispute,” the prime minister wrote.
The developments represent a thawing in bilateral ties, which have been frozen since a 2019 suicide bombing in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) blamed on Pakistan and India’s decision later that year to strip the disputed region’s autonomous status in order to bind it closer to India.
But over the past few weeks, the two governments have made tentative efforts to re-engage and calm the borders as they struggle to extricate their countries from the worst economic downturn ever amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
About a month after the armies of Pakistan and India agreed to observe a ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC), Bloomberg revealed the months-long talks that preceded the landmark announcement were brokered by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The cease-fire, the report, citing sources, said, is only the beginning of a larger roadmap to forge a lasting peace between the arch-rival neighbours.
The next step in the process involves both sides reinstating high commissioners in New Delhi and Islamabad, who were pulled in August 2019 after Pakistan protested India’s move to revoke the semi-autonomous status of occupied Kashmir.
The reinstatement of the envoys will be followed by the hard part: Talks on resuming trade and a lasting resolution on Kashmir.
