KARACHI: When Pakistan arrested Kulbhushan Jadhav on charges of being an Indian spy, India immediately said he was an Indian national and asked for consular access to him, but it was not given, the neighbouring country’s High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale said on Monday.

“We have arrested in [India-held] Jammu and Kashmir a Pakistani, Bahadur Ali, who has confessed that he received training of terrorism in Pakistan. We have offered Pakistani authorities full consular access to him,” he said in reply to a question about Indian involvement in Balochistan at an interactive session organised by the Karachi Council on Foreign Relations (KCFR).

The way forward

Mr Bambawale said in his keynote address that it was India’s desire to see a Pakistan which was moderate, prosperous and stable, and at peace with itself, its neighbours and the rest of the world.

The way forward was to move in a direction where trust and confidence between the two countries could be increased because it was something which had been lacking for the past many years, he said.

‘Modi looking forward to visiting Islamabad in November’

The road to normalisation of Pakistan-India relations, he said, lay through greater trade and business. The roadmap in that regard prepared by the two governments in 2012 could be unveiled. The total trade between the two countries was worth just $2.5 billion a year, whereas its potential was of $20bn.

To back his argument, Mr Bambawale said that when he was crossing the Wagah border to reach Delhi, he found 10 trucks carrying garlic waiting to cross the border from India to Pakistan.

He was told that the trucks were going to Lahore and adjoining areas because garlic was sold at a high price in Pakistan and the Indian product would cost one-fourth.

Mr Bambawale said India had offered food assistance to Afghanistan, most of which was wheat. India had suggested to Pakistan that the wheat should go by Pakistani trucks from Wagah to the Torkham border in order to reach Afghanistan. This was a ‘win-win-win’ situation for all three countries, he said.

Across the border

On the interaction between the two governments, he said that even while tensions were high, there had been contacts at the operational level. Over the past month and a half, there had been ‘cordial’ interactions between Pakistani and Indian border forces. Several meetings of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) had also been held.

“I can’t say about the future but as of today, Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi is looking forward to visiting Islamabad for the Saarc summit in November this year.”

Mr Bambawale said he knew that the visa process for Pakistanis to go to India was intricate and involved. However, about 100,000 people had applied and 90,000 had been awarded the visas last year. People-to-people relations must go on, he said.

On the discussions between the two countries, Mr Bambawale touched upon the sequence of events. He recalled that Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj came to Islamabad in December last year and it was decided that ‘certain talks’ would continue.

On Dec 25, the Indian prime minster stopped by in Lahore, but on Jan 2, the Pathankot incident happened.

He said the Indian government had been saying: “Let’s work together to get to the bottom of terrorism which was a headache not only for Pakistan, but for India and the world.”

Mr Bambawale said the two countries should not be talking on just one issue, rather on all issues.

He laid stress on the economic issue, calling it the low-hanging fruit which could be capitalised on in a short time.

The diplomat said with respect to China, India had taken the position in the 1960s and ’70s that the two countries must talk on the boundary problem before they could move on to other issues.

But in 1988 the decision was taken that the boundary problem was not going to be solved soon and, therefore, other issues should not be held up.

Today China was one of India’s largest trading partners as the bilateral trade was close to $75bn.

Mr Bambawale said the way forward between Pakistan and India was to talk about every issue under the sun and grab the low-hanging fruit because “that’s where we’d be able to increase trust and confidence”.

He said many friends in Pakistan had asked him why the two nations had stopped playing cricket. “Not only should we have cricket fixtures, but also hockey and table tennis matches.”

The Kashmir issue

Replying to a question about the Indian military’s atrocities in India-held Jammu and Kashmir and the way students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and writer Arundhati Roy were treated, he said Indians were as concerned about the people of Kashmir as anyone else in the world.

He said both Pakistan and India had issues which needed to be resolved.

Mr Bambawale said the issue of Jammu and Kashmir was domestic and “you should focus on your problems”.

When asked about India’s interference in Pakistan, such as in the case of Balochistan, he said the way to resolving issues was to have discussions.

Mentioning the arrests of Kulbhushan Jadhav and Bahadur Ali, he said there was a need to discuss these matters, although there were going to be difficulties.

On the question of India trying to sabotage the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), he said New Delhi wanted a prosperous and stable Pakistan and it didn’t have a problem with whatever contributed to the country’s prosperity. He said the problem with the CPEC was that it went through a certain part where both Pakistan and India were claiming their sovereignty.

Before delivering the vote of thanks, the KCFR’s Ikram Sehgal said: “It hurt us when India used pellet guns to blind hundreds of Kashmiris; it hurt us when the Indian prime minister went to the White House and China saying they must declare Pakistan a terrorist state.

“None of our cricketers were allowed to play in the IPL (Indian Premier League).” This way, he said, India was isolating Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2016