India ready to address Pakistan’s concerns on Safta
Associated Press of Pakistan
India ready to address Pakistan’s concerns on Safta
25 March 2007
NEW DELHI, Mar 25 APP: India is ready to consider some “unilateral” steps to address some concerns of Pakistan to see operationalisation of Safta.
Expressing these views in an interview with PTI on Sunday, ahead of the Saarc Summit, Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee stressed the “criticality of inter-connectivity among all the eight member countries of SAARC in terms of road access and energy to raise the volume of trade to the real potential of the region.”
“On SAFTA, there is a problem with Pakistan,” he said and added Pakistan has been insisting that its trade with India is “not free” and is based on the ‘positive list’ of goods.
Islamabad has expressed readiness to improve it and expanded the list to 1078 items, by adding 300 items.
“Let us examine the number of items they have given. Or whether we can do something unilaterally, irrespective of what they do,” he said.
