Stop deficit trade with India: Pakistani daily

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan should immediately stop its “one-sided” deficit trade with “enemy” India which is only enabling it to buy more arms to threaten Pakistan and oppress the Kashmiri people, an editorial in a Pakistani daily said Sunday.

“For the last three years, Pakistan is carrying on one-sided trade with India under which at least 100 Indian trucks loaded with goods enter Pakistan every day but in all this period, not one Pakistani truck has gone to India,” the editorial in the Nawa-i-Waqt said.

It cited Pakistani exporters as saying that the Indian government was raising several hurdles in the export of Pakistani goods.

“Pakistan is an independent country and its foreign policy should also be independent. It should not succumb to outside pressure to barter away its self-respect, its position and its economic security. India is our enemy and why do we need to carry on a deficit trade with it,” the editorial asked.

“Damn such trade and damn those who assented to such a lopsided trade policy,” it said, asking whether such trade had only been agreed to under international pressure and the prospects of commission.

The editorial alleged that India was using the proceeds of this trade “to heap all kinds of indignities on people of Kashmir - the “atoot (inalienable) part of Pakistan.”

“India is using the money earned from such trade to buy all kinds of arms from all around the world and is testing them on the Kashmiri people,” it said.

“Such an inglorious example should open the eyes of Pakistan’s rulers and all those propagating the ‘Aman ki Asha’ (the people-to-people contact programme between Pakistan’s Jang and India’s Times of India newspapers) and this unequal trade should be immediately stopped,” the editorial said.