Pakistan wants good relation with India: Hina

ISLAMABAD: Terming her visit to India an extremely successful trip, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on Tuesday said that Pakistan wanted good relations with all its neighbours, including New Delhi.

"When we look into policies vis a vis Afghanistan and India, we want to build a new relationship and a new era of cooperation with each other. We want to build trust, rather than to evaporate trust. We want to build new foundation of relationship," the Foreign Minister said in the National Assembly.

Taking the House in confidence regarding her maiden visit as Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Hina Rabbani Khar said the broad aspect of the visit was to have an uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue with India.

She said Pakistan and India had talked to each other many times in the past and whenever the talks gained momentum they were interrupted by any incident, which either took place here or there.

She said," the `uninterrupted and uninterruptible' dialogue means that we want meaningful and result-oriented dialogue and for that both the sides need to ensure favourable environment".

She acknowledged the resolve and efforts of the Prime Ministers of two countries for resuming dialogues.

She informed the Indian side that the Prime Minister of Pakistan had taken all political parties whether they were in or out of the parliament, into confidence over the resumption of Pak-India dialogue.

"He (the Indian Foreign Minister) got a message from Pakistan that we are serious in engaging with India. It is our desire and in the national interest to get engagement with India in a meaningful way," Hina said.

"We held ministerial and secretaries level talks with India on eight issues, including counter-terrorism, economic and commercial cooperation, Wooler Barrage, Siachen, Sir Creek, peace and security including CBM, Jammu and Kashmir and promotion of friendly exchanges," she told the House.

The Foreign Minister said during her visit to India she also held meeting with Kashmiri leaders, including Syed Ali Shah Gilani and Umer Farooq and others and assured them that Pakistan remained committed on its political and legal position on Jammu and Kashmir and would continue to support the Kashmiris cause.

"I also reiterated Pakistan's continued support of associating the true representatives of Kashmiris with the dialogue process on Jammu and Kashmir," she added.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011