NEW DELHI, April 2: Leaning on his skills as a banker, PrimeMinister Shaukat Aziz said here on Monday that the quest for peace between India and Pakistan was not a business transaction, but a commitment between two sides that could lead to a long wait before bearing fruit.

Speaking to Dawn at a reception hosted by Pakistan’s High Commissioner Shahid Malik, Mr Aziz said the peace process with India was progressing satisfactorily. He likened the required patience to Ireland’s example where decades of relentless bloodshed had ended in a handshake between the two warring leaders last month.

“You saw the picture of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams standing together last month. Who could have thought that this was ever going to be possible?” Mr Aziz said.

Mr Paisley and Mr Adams, sitting side by side for their first news conference in Stormont, confirmed that their power-sharing would begin on May 8. Mr Paisley said his Democratic Unionist Party was committed to full participation in government and Mr Adams said it was a ‘new era’.

The Irish analogy by the prime minister could be significant for more reasons. An Irish-style solution for the Kashmir dispute was recently raised as a possibility by Kashmir’s Hurriyat Conference leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

But Mr Aziz appeared to be speaking more generally about the time it had taken for the seemingly intractable dispute in Ireland to end in a peace accord. Former US president Bill Clinton had also backed an Ireland-like solution in the context of Kashmir. That was in 2003.

The Irish model had cropped up in a conversation again in August last year that President

Pervez Musharraf had with senior Indian writer A.G. Noorani. Gen Musharraf had given a neutral response to Mr Noorani's proposal for an Ireland-like solution.

The ministerial council set up to resolve the Ireland dispute may not have executive powers but if there are regular meetings, trust builds up and they could evolve joint policies by common consent without wielding executive powers. Would President Musharraf consider that a good substitute? The president responded by saying he needed to spell out the modalities before commenting one way or another.

Asked specifically to comment on the progress, if any, on President Musharraf’s four-point approach to end the Kashmir deadlock, Mr Aziz suggested that overall progress between the two sides was inclusive of all ‘ground-breaking ideas’. He did not say anything further on the issue.

Despite progress on the bilateral front, a view shared also by Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri, there had been hiccups. Mr Aziz was asked why Safta, the free trade agreement between Saarc members, had not worked smoothly between India and Pakistan.

He said there were differences in perception on what both sides needed to do on this, but trade had grown at an impressive pace nevertheless.

In a short crisp speech to the guests, including former prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral, Mr Aziz gave a not too flattering account of Saarc. “The organisation, historically speaking, has not reached some of its main objectives,” he said.

Lal Kishan Advani, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader, had a long chat with the prime minister and left before the speech. “Together the Saarc nations represent a major economic power in the whole world. But sour relations have impeded the potential for growth during the past decades. We need to think a scenario between our countries leads to peace and prosperity.”

The prime minister said one such idea was to move in the direction of resolving debilitating disputes, so that ‘we are allowed to achieve our potential’.

Earlier, Mr Aziz chatted with Indian journalists about his focus on economic reforms. He said deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation of the economy were the main plank of his vision for a prosperous Pakistan.