Source: Reuters
By Krittivas Mukherjee
Trade and cultural similarities are the best ways to improve relations between uneasy neighbours Pakistan and India, Pakistan’s foreign minister said on Friday.

India blames Pakistan for a ceasefire breach in disputed Kashmir and accuses its spy agency of involvement in last month’s bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, in which two senior diplomats were among 58 people killed.

It also says Islamabad is not doing enough to curb anti-Indian groups on Pakistan soil, putting their four-year-old peace process “under stress”.

“If the Berlin Wall can fall so can these troubles that we have that are keeping us apart,” Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on the sidelines of a summit of South Asian leaders in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. “I think trade will build new bridges, which are so important between us. I say we have been looking at divergences, look at the convergences we have, look at the language, culture, dress,” he said at a seminar with Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee.

Qureshi and Mukherjee met on Thursday amid an escalation in border skirmishes and a string of bomb attacks on Indian cities and interests abroad that together killed more than 100 people.

Qureshi said “a lot steam had been let out” at that meeting, which came after a series of violations of a ceasefire on the de facto border dividing the disputed Kashmir region.

There have been three exchanges of border fire this month, the most serious breach since the ceasefire began in 2003.

The New York Times reported this week that U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded members of Pakistan’s spy agency helped plan the July 7 suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, a charge that Pakistan’s foreign minister rejected as “rubbish”.
India and Pakistan’s security issues are likely again to cloud the agenda of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which was formed in 1985 to boost the region’s economic growth.

Qureshi said the region had to resolve its conflicts if the SAARC was to help lift millions of people out of poverty and push up living standards.

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Tags: CEASEFIRE, Foreign Minister, neighbours, Relations, Trade and cultural similarities