Reopen Wagah border: US to Pak

Quoting diplomatic sources, it said the proposal was discussed between Pakistan and Afghan officials this week when Afghanistan Foreign Minister Abdhullah Abdhullah visited Islamabad.

The Americans believe that reopening the trade route, closed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, would not only generate substantial income for the cash-starved Afghan government, but it will also help improve Pakistan’s relations with India and pave the way for wider trade between the Indian subcontinent and central Asia, the sources said.

Pakistan has ruled out the opening of the Wagah Border for the Afghan-India trade. Chairman of Pakistan’s Export Promotion Bureau, Tariq Ikram, said the country ‘‘cannot open the trade route, not in the present circumstances’’. Pakistan’s argument seems odd, given the fact that it has already built 70 per cent of a four-lane highway linking its eastern border with India and northwest with afghanistan the newspaper said.

The highway was initiated by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who hoped the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 would open up trade between South and central Asia.

Sharif believed that building a trade route between the regions would help Pakistan benefit from the trade between central Asian states and India, and he offered the use of port facilities to Afghanistan and its landlocked neighbours. Persistent instability in Afghanistan kept trade at a paltry level, however, the situation worsened with the rise of the Taliban regime. In 1999, the advent of a government headed by General Pervez Musharraf — known as an ‘‘India Hawk’’ — further strained India-Pakistan relations, the paper said.

The Pakistan government, however, has not yet reconciled to the post Sept 11 changes in Afghanistan which led to the fall of Taliban, it said.

The paper said Pakistan already finds it difficult to deal with India on its eastern border. ‘‘It does not want to risk a return to the pre-1979 situation of facing hostile neighbours to the east and west — India and Afghanistan.’’