WILL INDO- PAK RESOLVE THEIR DIFFERENCES LIKE KOREANS?

India and Pakistan should try to resolve their differences and make the “quest” for normalisation and peace the “noblest of goals” in the region, taking a cue from the recent thaw in the relations between North and South Korea, a Pakistani media report said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the South Korean President Moon Jae-in, during an inter-Korean summit on Friday, agreed to pursue a permanent peace treaty and denuclearise the Korean peninsula.

“Inevitably, a comparison between the renewed engagement between the two Koreas and the freeze in ties in the South Asian subcontinent will be made. The tensions and disputes between Pakistan and India are fundamentally different to the issues between the Koreas,” Dawn News said in an editorial.

“Pakistan and India have forged very different and irreversible histories, whereas the Koreas seek unification. Yet, a shared history and the common dreams and aspirations of a people with enduring cultural and other similarities across India and Pakistan make the quest for normalisation and peace in this region the noblest of goals,” it said.

The striking imagery of the Korean summit recalls the unprecedented hope and expectations created by the historic trip to Lahore of the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999. It is time for the leadership of India and Pakistan to once again tread the path of peace and friendship, the editorial said.

The India-Pakistan ties again nosedived in recent years with no bilateral talks taking place and both sides putting it on the back-burner. The ties between the two countries had strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based groups in 2016 and India’s surgical strikes inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The sentencing of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav to death in April last year further deteriorated the bilateral ties.

STUDENT REPORTER INBA – ASHISH BADONI