- No proposal floated from either side to resume trade: Jaishankar.
- The Pakistani government suspended the trade in 2019, he says.
- “Our concern was that they never gave us MFN treatment…”
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said no trade talks had taken place between New Delhi and Islamabad since last year.
Responding to a question from a reporter at the Indian Embassy in Washington, India’s top diplomat said no proposal had been made from either side (India and Pakistan) to resume trade commercial.
He stressed that India has never stopped its trade with its neighboring country. “Their (Pakistani) government took the decision to stop the trade in 2019.”
“Our concern was that they never gave us most favored nation status even though we had given it to them,” Jaishankar added.
“Each country has the sovereign right to make its decisions regarding its international commitments and responsibilities. We can have our respective points of view on this subject,” he concluded.
Pakistan downgraded its ties with India after the Modi-led government unilaterally changed the special status of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) in August 2019 – a move that Islamabad said undermined the environment conducive to talks between neighbors.
Islamabad linked its decision to normalize relations with New Delhi to the restoration of the IIOJK’s special status.
Despite frosty relations, the two countries agreed to renew the 2003 ceasefire agreement along the Line of Control (LoC) in February 2021.
In August last year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs categorically stated that there were no negotiations between Pakistan and India for resumption of bilateral trade.
FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch cited India’s illegal and unilateral measures in the IIOJK in 2019 as the reason for the suspension of bilateral trade. “This situation remains intact,” she stressed.
However, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government has expressed willingness to reassess trade relations with its main rival, its President Nawaz Sharif, in hopes of meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a near future.
“I have always been a proponent of good relations with India,” Nawaz said in an interview with Indian journalist Barkha Dutt last year, expressing hope that there was an opportunity to revive relations .
“It would have been a good thing if Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi had also attended the SCO summit. I hope that he and we will have the opportunity to sit down together in the not-so-distant future,” the former prime minister said.
Earlier in 2023, Nawaz highlighted the need to improve relations with neighbors including India and Afghanistan, noting that during his tenure, two Indian Prime Ministers – Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999 and Narendra Modi in 2015 – had traveled to Pakistan.
The PML-N president also congratulated Modi on his re-election as Indian Prime Minister for a record third time.