ISLAMABAD, March 31: Indian High Commissioner Shevshankar Menon said here on Friday that India-Pakistan talks were going in the right direction and reached a point where they would gather momentum.

“We have very good sense how to tackle the problems like Siachin and Sir Creek — in a pragmatic way,” he said.

Mr Menon made the remarks while replying to questions after delivering a lecture on “India — Today and Tomorrow” at the local chapter of the South Asian Free Media Association (Safma).

What was important to him was not the pace of the talks — which a questioner found “not good enough” — but that they were “sustainable”.

“We require an external environment of peace within which we are free to develop our country ... This also requires cooperative engagement with our neighbours, building and rebuilding intra- regional connectivity,” he said.

India’s economic growth over the last 15 years “has clearly transformed the nature of its relationships with the major powers and all our immediate neighbours, except Pakistan”, he observed.

Pakistan’s intent to be a bridge between South and Central Asia “suggest a recognition in Pakistan of the new possibilities for shared prosperity that are available if we do not give political veto over cooperation and self interest”, he added.

“We are prepared to throw open our markets to all our neighbours, and have accepted the principle of non-reciprocity,” he said, noting that India has sealed free trade agreements with China, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal.

Doors were open to Pakistan also. The “strategic choice” was for Pakistan to make.

“India’s vision of how we can realize the potential of India-Pakistan relations and how they can join the mainstream of current developments in Asia was outlined by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week in Amritsar,” Mr Menon said.

Text of the speech the Indian prime minister made on March 24 were distributed on the occasion as if to make the people of Pakistan understand the full import of his “vision”.

“We feel that the time has come when India and Pakistan, while working on our differing political and security perspectives, should focus attention on economic cooperation, building upon our strengths, complementaries and affinities,” said the Indian diplomat.

“Do both. Don’t let one veto the other,” he replied when asked if such cooperation was feasible without resolving the Kashmir dispute.

Questioned about the much-admired social and economic progress that India has made, he said the Indian leadership’s early choices of “land reform and the spread of education” brought about this change.

“India’s society today is quite different from what it was in 1947,” he said, informing that today over 65 per cent of all Indians are literate, a sizable middle class of more than 300 million people exists, with over 20 million joining their ranks every year.

“That middle class now provides stability to India’s polity, is the driver of the economy, and represents a basic change from a stratified and rigid social order,” the Indian diplomat said.