Kamal Nath, Musharraf talk trade issues

Commerce Minister Kamal Nath8217;s two-day visit to Islamabad ended on a note of surprise yesterday. Just as the group of SAARC Commerce Mi...

Commerce Minister Kamal Nath8217;s two-day visit to Islamabad ended on a note of surprise yesterday.

Just as the group of SAARC Commerce Ministers were ending their meeting with President Pervez Musharraf in his Rawalpindi residence in the evening, the Indian Minister was given a hand-written note, asking him not to say good-bye to the President.

An unscheduled 40-minute meeting, one of Musharraf8217;s first with a minister of the Manmohan Singh Cabinet, it is being seen as an occasion when Pakistan further lowered its guard on the issue of removing trade barriers.

Nath, who returned to New Delhi after attending the two day conference of SAARC Commerce Ministers in Islamabad, described his meeting with Musharraf as very 8216;8216;positive and warm.8217;8217;

He told The Indian Express,8216;8216;The message I got after the meeting was that Pakistan wants a breakthrough on trade to take place concurrently with the peace process, apart from the Kashmir issues. They want enhanced trade to be part of the composite dialogue.8217;8217;

Pakistan Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan is understood to have fixed the meeting between the Pakistan President and Nath. He, in fact, flew in briefly to Lahore on Tuesday, possibly to tie up details of the Joint Study Group on Trade and Commerce, announced by the two Commerce Ministers at the end of the SAARC meet.

During the Musharraf-Nath meeting in Rawalpindi as well as the bilaterals between the two ministers in Islamabad, the Pakistan side discussed the potential of imports of textile machinery and agricultural products from India.

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The potential of Indo-Pak cooperation on tourism was also discussed, which has also been raised today by Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in New Delhi.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More