February 25, 2007	Sunday	Safar 7, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Feb 24: Saarc Committee of Experts will formally take up the New Delhi’s request to review Pakistan’s decision of not offering India trade on negative list under the South Asia Free Trade Area (Safta) agreement.

A senior official told Dawn on Saturday that the issue would be taken up in the Safta Council of Ministers which will meet in Kathmandu on Monday.

Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan has left for Kathmandu to attend the meeting. Pakistan has restricted trade with India only to positive list that allows trade of more than 1,076 items under Safta.

The official said the experts committee would conclude their deliberations on the issue by Sunday and then forward their recommendations to the council.

India pleaded in a letter to the Saarc secretariat that Islamabad’s decision to restrict trade scope only to positive list with New Delhi would jeopardise Safta’s implementation and affect all the contracting states.

However, Pakistan has worked out a strategy to defend the country’s stand of not granting MFN status to India, which would be discussed at length in the meeting, official added.

Pakistani officials believed that granting of MFN status to India was an issue of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Moreover, the Safta agreement did not contain any provision that trade relations between the two countries would function on MFN basis with the ratification of the agreement.

Following the ratification of the agreement, Pakistan had already notified the agreed tariff reductions effective from July 1, 2006 on all items except those indicated in the sensitive list. The tariff reductions have also been allowed on those goods which are presently importable from India under the positive list.

Pakistan ratified Safta in March 2006 with a condition that MFN status would not be awarded to India until there was a tandem move in other bilateral issues particularly Kashmir.