INSISTING it was time for peace in a region dominated by enmity between Pakistan and India, Pakistan's prime minister said today that the two nuclear-armed rivals had the chance to "prove the pundits of gloom and doom wrong". "After nearly half a century of acrimony and tensions, Pakistan-India relations are now at a historic crossroads," Shaukat Aziz said in a speech to top Indian business leaders, speaking a few hours after meeting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh amid an often-stumbling peace process. "With sincerity and courage born out of the conviction that our destinies are indeed intertwined, both countries can open a new chapter of friendship and cooperation," he said.
Mr Aziz, in India during a regional tour as the outgoing chairman of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC, repeatedly insisted that peace was possible between the two nations, which were carved from British colonial India at independence in 1947. "If India takes a step forward, Pakistan will respond by two," he said in his speech overnight. "Let us both prove the pundits of gloom and doom wrong." Mr Aziz also played down recent tough talk by both sides, a flare-up that began after Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, raised the possibility of major changes in the way Kashmir - the disputed Himalayan region at the root of decades of Indo-Pakistan distrust - is governed. General Musharraf's comments, made to Pakistani reporters and not through diplomatic channels, set off a back-and-forth of increasingly belligerent comments. But Mr Aziz said there had been no lasting damage. "The discussions and the options listed by the president of Pakistan were merely on the basis of discussions within Pakistan," he told reporters after meeting with Mr Singh. "No proposals were ever presented and no reaction was expected from India." |