Nawaz Sharif hails Jaishankar's visit to Islamabad as a new 'beginning' in Indo-Pak ties

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif

Urging India and Pakistan to "bury their past" and move on towards a prosperous and peaceful future, former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif said that the visit by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) this week was a "beginning" and hoped it would be followed by an "opening".

Hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise trip to Lahore in December 2015, Sharif said he was not happy with the "long pause" in the ties between the two countries and hoped that both sides should look ahead with a positive approach. "We can’t change our neighbours, neither can Pakistan, nor can India. We should live like good neighbours," the 74 year-old leader said.

Asked if a bridge builder between the two countries was required, he quipped: "That is the role I am trying to play."

Jaishankar travelled to Islamabad on Tuesday for a less-then-24-hour trip to attend the SCO conclave as the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan in the last nine years amid continuing strain in bilateral relations. "This is how things should go ahead. We would have liked PM Modi to come but it was good that the Indian foreign minister came. I have said before that we must pick up the threads of our conversation," Sharif said.

"We have spent 70 years in this way (fighting) and we should not let this go on for the next 70 years. We (PML-N governments) have tried hard to work on this relationship to let it just go this way. Both sides should sit down and discuss how to go forward," he said.

There was no bilateral meeting between the Indian and the Pakistani foreign ministers on the sidelines of the SCO conclave. For New Delhi, the trip was to attend the multilateral meeting. However, some senior functionaries in the Pakistani establishment are projecting Jaishankar's visit as an "ice-breaker".

"We should not go to the past and should look at the future. It would be better if we bury the past so that we can use the potential between the two countries," Sharif said. "I think it (Jaishankar's visit) is an opening and it must be taken forward."

The ties between India and Pakistan came under severe strain after India's warplanes pounded a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot in Pakistan in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terror attack. The relations further deteriorated after India on August 5, 2019 abrogated Article 370 that had conferred special status to Jammu and Kashmir and the split the state into two Union Territories.

Sharif used the opportunity to recount how his government had tried to iron out creases in the bilateral ties with India through dialogues and how the visits by former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and PM Modi vindicated the progress he had made. "Imran Khan (former Pakistani premier) used words that destroyed the relationship. As leaders of the two countries and neighbours, we should not even think, let alone utter such words.