Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, July 11: The 3rd Islamabad Dialogue, which concluded in the capital of neighboring country the other day, has outlined recommendations for Indian and Pakistan Governments to improve bilateral relations and address outstanding issues.
The dialogue was the result of collaboration between the Jinnah Institute and New Delhi’s Center for Dialogue and Reconciliation (CDR) and brought together senior parliamentarians, former military officers, former diplomats, media persons and police experts, who adopted the joint statement after two days of intense deliberations.
“Increase in India-Pakistan bilateral trade is encouraging despite the escalation of tensions on the LoC in January this year”, the joint statement said, adding “the implementation of commitments made on bilateral trade should be expedited by both the countries”.
The participants recommended that travel be made easier and the number of entry points on the land routes increased so as to facilitate people to people contact. Welcoming the resumption of back channel diplomacy by the two countries, they stressed the need of intelligence sharing at the highest level keeping in view the common threat from terrorism.
Emphasizing that both the countries should not allow Afghanistan to become another contentious bilateral issue, the joint statement said, “both India and Pakistan should take each other into confidence regarding their concerns about the post-2014 Afghanistan”, adding both the countries should explore opportunities to collaborate in the fields of IT, communication, health care, education and banking to help reconstruct Afghanistan”.
They urged that Pakistan should consider allowing overland transit through the Wagha-Attari border for trade between India and Afghanistan.
“We urge that there should be no reluctance in keeping the dialogue on Kashmir on the forefront of bilateral discussions and all channels in this regard must be kept open”, they said, adding “the leadership in both the countries should issue directive to the concerned authorities for proper implementation of the agreed CBMs on cross-LoC travel”.
Stating that cross-LoC travel should not be restricted to divided families, they stressed that this should be made permissible for all residents of J&K and the authority to issue travel permits should rest with the local administration on both sides.
They have recommended a joint India-Pakistan watchdog to monitor human rights abuses and suggest mechanisms to prevent state violations, completion of nationality verification of prisoners/detained fishermen within three months and implementation of the recommendations made by India-Pakistan Judicial Committee on Prisoners.
The Indian delegation was comprised of Sushobha Barve, H K Dua, Jatin Desai, C Rajamohan, Siddharth Vardarajan, Kalpana Sharma, Sayeed Malik, Masood Hussain, Kavita Srivastava and Omair Ahmed.
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