Pakistan has said that economic cooperation with India will be possible only if an amicable solution is found to the Kashmir issue.
Ahsan Iqbal Chaudhary, coordinator of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs Pakistan 2010 Programme, told the Centre for Strategic and International Studies here that such cooperation depended on the peaceful relations between the two countries, which in turn depended on an amicable settlement to the Kashmir issue.
Asked whether he was not making economic relations between the two countries hostage to a political settlement on Kashmir, Chaudhary, a member of the Pakistan National Assembly, said, as much as we would like to delink the two issues, they are basic and have a long history.
If you dont have political stability in a country, there is no economic development. If you dont have political stability in relations between two nations, economics can never grow, he added.
How can you achieve a peaceful and balanced society in Pakistan without resolving the Kashmir dispute?, he asked.
