NEW DELHI, March 29: Rigid positions and stereotyped arguments over disputes such as Kashmir are blocking India's land access to Central Asia via Pakistan and the flow of its oil and gas to India
, Pakistan's High Commissioner in New Delhi, Aziz Ahmed Khan said on Monday.
"Road transit through Pakistan could provide India and other countries the shortest access to the vast Central Asian markets where extended road network already exists and more are being developed under the auspices of ECO," Mr Khan said in a keynote address to a meeting on rail and road connectivity across Asian countries.
Pakistan is located in close proximity of cheap and easily accessible oil and gas resources of the Middle East and Central Asia. "These could be easily and inexpensively transported to energy deficient India through pipelines from Iran and Turkmenistan.
So far prevailing mistrust between the two countries has obliged India to oppose transit of pipelines through Pakistan, and to opt for the more expensive LNG alternative or the hitherto untried deep-sea route," Mr Khan observed.
Senior officials of the Asian Institute of Transport Development, his hosts, sketched out a vision of land connectivity from Central Asia to Myanmar and beyond. They offered Pakistan membership of the 16-nation club "with no conditionality and no cost attached."
Mr Khan said South Asia stood at a crossroads today. "By giving up rigid positions and stereotyped arguments and by resolving to grit our teeth for a just solution of longstanding problems we can bring both peace and prosperity to our teeming millions and start a new era of peace, amity and harmony in the region."
He recalled that the foreign secretaries of the two countries who met in Islamabad last month had agreed on a roadmap to start the composite dialogue process after general elections in India.
"The foreign secretaries are likely to meet to discuss peace and security including nuclear and conventional CBMs, and Jammu and Kashmir by early June in New Delhi," Mr Khan said.
The technical level discussion on other six items Siachen, Wullar Barrage, terrorism and drug trafiicking, Sir Creek, friendly exchanges and economic cooperation would take place in July. It would be followed by a meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries in August to review the progress of the composite dialogue.
