New Pak PM committed on improving trade ties with India: US

The new Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, is committed to improving trade ties with India and grant it the status of 'Most Favored Nation', a top official of the Obama Administration has said.
In the past few years, India and Pakistan have made quite substantial progress in their trade, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake, said here yesterday.
"Now that we have a new Prime Minister in Pakistan who is committed to moving ahead on the trade front with India and to moving ahead on Most Favored Nation status, that's going to have quite a positive impact on trade between India and Pakistan," said Blake, an official serving under US President Barack Obama.

He pointed that the next challenge would be to take next step of direct transit trade through Pakistan into Afghanistan.
"It's more a policy question, and particularly getting the Afghanistan-Pakistan transit trade agreement first implemented, and then, even more importantly, eventually convincing Pakistan that it's in their own interest to allow transit trade from India, from Bangladesh and the rest of the subcontinent through Pakistan to Afghanistan and beyond," Blake said at the Woodrow Wilson Center - a Washington-based think-tank.
For connecting South Asia with Central Asia through rail-road, India and Pakistan have to overcome the trust deficit with respect to Afghanistan, Blake said.

"So that's a larger problem that still has to be dealt with. I'm very hopeful that will happen, but it's going to take a little bit more time. Once that does happen, then there will be automatically incentive to develop those rail links, the road links and all the other things. I'm confident that there will be sufficient private sector money that can help to drive those things. There's such a clear opportunity to drive that," he said.

Blake said that the proposed
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Pipeline (TAPI) would connect the vast gas reserves of Turkmenistan with the hungry energy markets of South Asia, while providing much-needed transit revenue to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"While we have a long way to go, TAPI is closer to reality today than many would have thought possible even two years ago," he said.