We want to normalize relations with Islamabad: India’s envoy to Pakistan at Lahore event

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Top Indian diplomat has said that his India wants normalize relations with Pakistan stressing that today's diplomacy focuses on tourism, trade and technology because "money speaks its own language".

Speaking at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry function in in the provincial capital city Lahore, India's deputy high commissioner to Pakistan, Suresh Kumar, said India never halted trade relations with the country and wants to move towards normalising business ties, Dawn Newspaper reported.

Transit trade was extremely important as Central Asia was a big market and India needed access to it. Similarly, Central Asia also needed access to India, the Dawn reported quoted him as saying.

He said India doesn't want to stop trade with Pakistan. "It would be better to see how we can change our problems and situations."

The senior diplomat said that the number of visas issued by the Indian embassy to Pakistanis dropped during the Covid-19 pandemic while insisting that the number had now increased, as 30,000 visas were being issued every year, which he said was "a huge number", the Dawn report stated.

Kumar said the Indian government was also issuing medical and sports visas to Pakistanis.

He said gone were the days when diplomacy used to focus on compiling political reports. Today's diplomacy, he said, revolved around tourism, trade and technology "as money speaks its own language".

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India was presently doing trade of $120 billion with China, in which the balance of trade is towards China, he said, stressing that imports "are not always wrong and also have advantages".

Kumar said the intellectual property had become more important than physical property. "By sitting in distant countries and manufacturing in other countries, Europe is making money due to intellectual property rights," he said. "Universities in Europe focus on technology."

LCCI President Kashif Anwar said it was generally thought that improving economic relations between India and Pakistan was a complex issue that required addressing a range of political, economic and social factors.

"But we are of the view that the foremost step that could be taken to improve economic relations between India and Pakistan is to normalise trade relations. This would bring substantial economic benefits evenly to both the countries," he said, according to the Dawn report.