Asif Zardari: ‘India & Pakistan Share Blood Ties’
By The Pakistani Spectator • Nov 24th, 2008 • Category: Politics • 6 CommentsPresident Asif Ali Zardari has become Pakistan’s first head of state to promise a “no-first nuclear-strike” against India. He talked of the need for change and reconciliation in India-Pakistan relationship, and the possibility of doing away with passports for travel between the two countries.
The surprise statement came when Zardari was addressing the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit at New Delhi on Saturday via a satellite link from his official residence in Islamabad. Telecast live from India by CNN-IBN, the Zardari session was picked up simultaneously by Pakistani news channels.
“Zardari borrowed a quote from his late wife (Benazir Bhutto), who once said that there’s a ‘little bit of India in every Pakistani and a little bit of Pakistan’ in every Indian. He also talked about Indians’ and Pakistanis’ ’shared bloodlines’.
” ‘I do not know whether it is the Indian or the Pakistani in me that is talking to you today,’ Zardari said, amid applause from his high-profile audience, which included diplomats, politicians and industrialists.
“The President also talked of a common South Asian economic bloc with other countries. He suggested a ‘flexible Indo-Pak visa regime’, eliminating the travel documents now required and replacing them with a smart-card enabled e-visa system.” More here…
The deteriorating relationship with the US administration seems to be prompting Pakistani leaders to abandon the traditional 60-year-old bitter rivalry with India. India and Pakistan have a shared heritage going back to centuries. But that came to an abrupt end in 1947 with the end of the British colonial rule and a bloody partition.
“Polls show that the U.S. already faces ‘mounting popular opposition’ in Pakistan, which has not been significantly influenced by the election of a new civilian government in February,” wrote Jim Hoagland in July 2008 under the heading “India the Key to U.S.-Pakistan Relationship” in RealClearPolitics .
“Pakistani politicians, civil servants and military men have told me in recent months that open ‘collaboration’ with the United States is so ‘dangerous’ that they cannot afford to be seen working with the U.S.
“India’s growing economic power will leave its neighbor in the dust unless Pakistan becomes part of that prosperity. Pakistan’s future will be determined by its relations with India, not by increased U.S. aid or maintaining its support for tribal war in Afghanistan.” More here…
The New York Times has an interesting take on India-Pakistan-US tangle…Please click here.
By Swaraaj Chauhan
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I whole heartedly support the president of Pakistan, Mr. Zardari, on this initiative and offer for reconciliation. Making a peace ‘offensive’ is much more difficult and brave move. I am conscious of the fact that some of you here will disagree. However, fighting the extreme poverty, prevailing here, is much more urgent task right now. Povery is like cancer. Poverty is the biggest evil threatening us. Poverty is the mother of all the evils, proving to be deadly dangerous. Povery creates division, it creates ethnic strife, it depresses, it demoralises and it encourages forces of extremism to exploit. Spending billions on war machinery is obscene; denying the basic rights to a decent job to earn a decent living to our vast majority of povery striken populace is criminal, it is perverse !
Asif Zardari needs our equivocal support; this region needs strong statesmen like him on both side of the divide and solve the conflict once and for ever.
SPOT ON.
improving INDO-PAK relations will be MORE beneficial for pakistan…..
an unlikely example…….
ramchand pakistani the popular pakistani film was released with only 14 copies…….but in calcutta alone that film ran in 5 MULTIPLEXES AND 2 STAND ALONE CINEMA HALLS……..
Therefore…………14 in ENTIRE PAKISTAN…….7 in only kolkata alone……….
READ THE INTERVIEW……….
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081109/jsp/7days/story_10084490.jsp
A STANZA I WANNA QUOTE……….
The ban on Indian films since 1965, Jabbar believes, has killed the Pakistani film industry, by closing Pakistani cinema to competition and exposure to the different genres of Indian film-making. It is only now that the ban has been lifted and Indian films have begun to be shown in Pakistani cinemas. “In Pakistan we had only 14 prints of our film circulating. It was released in limited theatres,” says Jabbar. “In contrast, in India, where it was released on October 2, it ran in multiplexes in Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai and Ahmedabad and has done well in the cities.”
THEREFORE PAKISTAN BENIFITED from this.
Peace.
He was a bit slavish in his body language, a president must be dignified while he speaks but the problem with this man he hasn’t learnt to use his brain when he responds to someone’s question.
In my opinion, the most stupid man on earth is one who start speaking within no time as soon as the inquirer stops: unfortunatey Zardari is amongst them.
This is foolish even to think about Indo-Pak freindship at such a high level without solving Kashmir dispute. Whatever possible could be done for this so called freindship the the problem of Kashmir keeps bouncing back until it is fully resolved.
India must think this aspect of freindship as well.
I think that what he has said is mere repetition of what Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Musharraf were trying in their own ways while in office. I also happen to think that dislay of serious and sincere desire to be friends with India will finally lead to the solution of Kashmir problem. It might not be as you and me might wish, however, I am sure that Kashmiri people would finally like to be free and independant people. And why not? Why can’t Kashmir be for the Kashmiri people and still be our best friends. They can use the financial resources that we throw on the ‘war machinery’ as our contribution and from Indian side this should help them develop into a viable free state. They can become Switzerland of this region, just imagine.
[...] Asif Ali Zardari said, “there’s a ‘little bit of India in every Pakistani and a little bit of Pakistan’ [...]
Great read!