Kashmir conflict is elephant in the room: Hina Rabbani Khar on South Asia integration, trade potential

Her remarks came at a session on 'Strategic outlook on South Asia' at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022

Describing the Kashmir issue as "the elephant in the room", Pakistan Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has said any efforts to integrate South Asia and boost trade would be futile without resolving the "70-year-old dispute".

Her remarks, on May 24, came at a session on 'Strategic outlook on South Asia' at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022, in replies to suggestions about boosting ties and facilitating people's movement across borders while keeping aside the differences between India and Pakistan.

India has been maintaining that terror and talks cannot take place together and for any normalisation in ties, Pakistan needs to stop terror activities against India. India has also been consistently rejecting Pakistan's position on the Kashmir issue and has been demanding that Pakistan should move out of the territory occupied by it.

Reacting to a remark by a panellist that India was more worried about China than Pakistan now, Ms. Khar said, "I look at China obviously as an immediate neighbour and also as part of a broader region that we all belong to. At the same time, I would not celebrate India's antagonism towards China, pretty much in the same way that I would not celebrate anyone's antagonism towards anyone else at all."

On the Kashmir issue, Ms. Khar, Pakistan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, said, "... I did not want to go into all of that as it is an economic debate but it is the elephant in the room and you cannot ignore it." She claimed that her party when in power earlier had made a lot of efforts to normalise ties with India, including her visit to India in 2011, inking of a visa agreement as well as opening up of trade.

The Minister said she and her party had decided to do so despite knowing it will take a lot of political hit due to what all had happened after 1965, when no government of any type in Pakistan thought it was wise to normalise trade relations with India, because there was a very high political cost, unless there was a resolution to the Kashmir conflict.

"Still, we went ahead and said no, let's try to normalise it, first of all, because we are human beings who are very similar in every way, culturally, we look alike, the way we speak, we eat similar food and we are pretty much very similar. But we have this huge divide on the basis of inherited disputes," she said.