Ties with India, US improving: Foreign Ministe

(BATKHELA-MOVIES) ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's most troubled foreign relationships have improved in recent months, its top diplomat said on Saturday, pointing to upcoming trade talks with New Delhi and broad agreement on regional security goals with Washington as evidence. 

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, in an exclusive interview with Reuters, said negotiations to normalise trade with India would allow progress on other issues between the two nuclear-armed South Asian rivals.

"I think it's broadly agreed that we need to make some simultaneous progress on these issues," she said.

The hope is that an increase in trade will feed into wider trust between the two countries and help them resolve major flashpoints, like the disputed Kashmir region, although a solution to this problem has proved intractable for decades.

"But there has been a great improvement in the environment," she said. "I think we can move forward."

She strongly denied that Pakistan was not committed to finalising Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status for India, as alleged by an unnamed Indian government official on Friday, who said Islamabad was "backtracking" on the issue in the face of domestic opposition. 

"There is absolutely no question of backtracking of cabinet approval of trade normalisation with India," she said. "I want to completely dismiss any indication that there's any retraction
on what we said."

Pakistan announced it would upgrade India to a most favoured nation on Wednesday, a move that would help normalise commercial ties by ending heavy restrictions on what India is allowed to export across the border.

Khar said the two countries' commerce secretaries would meet in mid-November to hammer out the details of the trade agreement, but that there was no lack of commitment to the agreement itself.

"The cabinet very clearly gave them a way forward, which is trade normalisation with India," she said.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani also rejected the charges of backtracking in comments to reporters in Lahore on Saturday.

Khar said relations with the United States were also on the mend, with "a complete convergence of stated interests" on Afghanistan.

"Nothing would make us happier than a strong government in Afghanistan," she said. "I look at the last few weeks, and relations with the US have been generally positive. It's basically the operational details to agree on."