.
.
.
Sharif sees his victory as mandate for peace with India
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has reiterated his resolve to improve ties with New Delhi, saying he sees his victory in the national elections as a mandate for peace with India.
Sharif's statement comes amid escalation of tensions between the two countries following the killing of five Indian soldiers in an ambush along the Line of Control (LoC) in J&K on August 6.
"I made my position very clear: if we get a mandate, we will make sure we pick up the threads from where we left off in 1999 and then reach out to India, sit with them, resolve all our outstanding issues through peaceful means," Sharif said in an interview with British daily The Telegraph.
"We didn't have any India-bashing slogans in the elections. We don't believe in such slogans. There have been such slogans in the past but not now. In fact, I very clearly spoke about good relations with India even before the elections.''
He called for an end to the arms race and resolution of the Kashmir problem. "We've been in a very unfortunate arms race with India ever since partition and I think we are a very unfortunate country from that point of view.'' He said the two countries have wasted much money on military hardware, building up their defences against each other.
"I think this must come to an end. The money wasted in defence should have gone into social sectors - it should have gone into education, it should have gone into health care." He hoped the two countries realize these mistakes. "I think the main objective of making peace with each other is to get rid of all that.''
(INVESTMENT IN INDUSTRY AND INFRASTRUCTURE ARE THE TRUE ENGINES OF PPP GDP growth for a Third World country....followed by education, where traditionally in Pakistan it is allocated around 1-2% of GDP, despite government promises. In India education gets 4% of GDP, but the implementation system is very weak and corrupt-------Ayesha Siddiqui's book 'Military Inc' is worth reading in this context, and in my view the defense sector in REAL TERMS eats up between 8--10% of GDP, which is a huge waste maintaining 1.1 million men in uniform unofficially, fighting Washingtons manufactured fake wars, namely GWoT.........fighting basically fellow Pakistanis, creating internal refugees, hatred against Punjabis, political instability. Besides that the Pakistani tax/revenue system has to be modernized, so that more Pakistanis pay their tax, and especially the rich Zamindars/Tamindars...and 30 business families including the Sharifs. Pakistan is a rich country with a PPP GDP OF around $550 billion June 2013, but of that probably ONLY 7% of the real PPP GDP is taxed........that is where the REAL money/revenue is going to come for the Sharif government if he is sincere and effective, and not just make speeches)
Sharif said he wanted to cut the defence budget but added it cannot be one-sided. "India would also have to do it."
(NO! That is an unfair demand required from the third largest economy on earth, and population of 1.2 billion....India faces other challenges besides Pakistan which requires no elaboration. Besides India's defense budget ratio to GDP is a paltry 1.7% of GDP which is very low...ANYWAY. .De-escalation between the two countries can be done in other clever ways. Have India and Pakistan conducted joint military exercises? Can the heads of the 3 services of both countries meet every year for a few days? Can heavily armed troops from the respective borders be reduced or completely withdrawn and replaced with paramilitary border guards, which are lightly armed? Can joint investigation teams be set up...civilian and military to investigate border incidents? ...........millions of ideas if both sides are serious, and are not working for foreign powers )
To a question whether Pakistan's army would accept peace with India and cut in defence budget, Sharif said: "We're all on one page. There's only one page and that is the page of the government of Pakistan."
He sought an end to mutual recrimination. "Anything going wrong in India - they blame us; anything going wrong in Pakistan - we blame them. I think this blame game has to stop."
