Jaishankar’s visit is a ‘beginning’, hope it leads to an ‘opening’, says Nawaz Sharif batting for India-Pakistan trade ties

Calling for India and Pakistan to move on from the “past”, former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that the two sides must “pick up the threads” of the conversation that he had begun with former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, adding that the visit by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) this week was a “beginning” and hoped it would be followed by an “opening”.

Pitching for bilateral trade and connectivity, Mr. Sharif, who stepped aside in favour of his brother Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, after PML-N came to power in March this year, repeatedly spoke about building a “different future” on tackling issues like climate change and energy shortages, and said that if both leaders attend the CoP Summit in November, that they would meet. He also said that it was his desire that India and Pakistan cricket teams play matches with each other on their home turfs, including during the upcoming Champions Trophy in Pakistan and the Asia Cup in India next year.

He also blamed the poor state of ties on Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan for making personal statements about Mr. Modi, which he said could “destroy good relations between any two countries”.

“This [Mr. Jaishankar’s visit] is how things should go ahead. We would have liked Mr. Modi to come but it was good that Mr. Jaishankar came,” he told a group of Indian media including The Hindu at the Government House in Lahore, flanked by his daughter and Chief Minister of Punjab in Pakistan Maryam Sharif. “We have spent 75 years in this way (fighting) and we should not let this go on for the next 75 years,” he added using the oft-repeated phrase that India and Pakistan “can’t change their neighbours (using the Urdu term ‘humsayaa’).

However, Mr. Sharif declined to respond to questions about more contentious issues of the past, including the Pathankot terror attack that followed Mr. Modi’s visit to Lahore, as well as whether “burying the past” would mean moving beyond Pakistan’s objections to the 2019 re-organisation of Jammu Kashmir and amendment of Article 370. He said this was “not the occasion” to discuss those issues.

Mr. Sharif and Ms. Maryam Sharif met the Indian journalists who had travelled to Pakistan to cover the 10-nation SCO Council of Heads of Government (CHG) meeting on October 15-16, a rare occasion in the past few years when Indian journalists have been granted visas and said that visas should now be “eased” between both countries.

While Mr. Sharif does not hold office, he is the President of the ruling PML-N, and is seen as the most influential figure in Pakistani politics at present. On Tuesday, he hosted a dinner to bring together all the major political parties in power in order to gain consensus for a constitutional amendment Mr. Shehbaz Sharif wants to introduce. Ms. Sharif said that she “continues to be guided” by him in her work as Punjab’s first woman Chief Minister.

When asked by The Hindu if he believed the new PML-N government should roll back the cancellation of trade and travel ties by the previous government in 2019, Mr. Sharif said that he would like to see them restored but that “there may be others in the country that disagree”.

“Why should Indian and Pakistani farmers and manufacturers go outside to sell their products. Goods now go from Amritsar to Lahore via Dubai. What are we doing? Who is benefitting from this? What should take two hours, now takes two weeks?” the former Prime Minister said, urging the countries to see each other as “potential markets”.

“I believe India, Pakistan and the neighbourhood should deal as India’s own states do with each other — trade, industry, electricity. This was something we discussed with [former] PM Vajpayee, and he had once even asked Pakistan to supply electricity to India at a reasonable price,” Mr. Sharif said, adding that the late former PM was “still remembered” in Pakistan for his positive statements about Pakistan at the launch of the Lahore bus and Lahore Declaration.

It is unclear whether Mr. Sharif’s positive words about the relationship spoke for the Pakistan government, or indicated any shift in positions within the political or military establishment about re-establishing ties to pre-2019 levels and restoring High Commissioners in Delhi and Islamabad. In the past few months, Mr. Sharif has made other comments, including saying that Pakistan should accept responsibility for wrecking the Lahore spirit by launching the war in Kargil. He also sent greetings on X to Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he took office in June this year, eliciting a response from Mr. Modi.

When asked whether a bridge builder was required, he said, with a laugh indicating the journalists in the room, that that was the role he was “trying to play”.

Praising PM Modi for his decision to fly to Lahore to meet him in December 2015, Mr. Sharif, who was Prime Minister at the time, said that Mr. Modi and he had shared a warm relationship and had discussed “very good prospects” for the future of India and Pakistan. He particularly remembered Mr. Modi’s meeting with his mother during his Lahore trip.

“These are not small gestures, they mean something to us, especially in our countries. We should not overlook [such gestures],” Mr. Sharif said reserving some harsh comments for his successor as Prime Minister, Imran Khan, who has been in prison for the last one year on a number of charges. At the United Nations General Assembly in 2019, Mr. Khan had accused Mr. Modi of being a member of the RSS, which he said was “inspired by Hitler and Mussolini”, and accused him of “stupid and cruel actions” in Jammu and Kashmir.

“Imran Khan used words that destroyed the relationship. As leaders of two countries and neighbours, we should not even think, let alone utter such words,” he told the journalists, adding that he was not happy about the “long-pause” in the relationship, where neither side has held formal talks since December 2015.