Thaindian News

Islamabad, Aug 16 (IANS) It is time for Pakistan to get over its obsession with India, said a Pakistani daily.

An editorial in the Daily Times Tuesday said despite the Pakistan Army’s continued dominance, it seems “as if change is in the air in the light of its self-inflicted difficulties vis-à-vis Afghanistan, India and the international community”.

“It is time for Pakistan to get over its India-centric obsession and move towards a more sensible set of policies in conformity with today’s world in the hope of a better future,” it added.

The editorial said that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz chief Nawaz Sharif has made some interesting remarks vis-à-vis peace between India and Pakistan.

Nawaz Sharif said at an Aug 13 seminar: “I was ready to write a new story, but I did not know that General Pervez Musharraf was writing another story, a rather conflicting one.”

He was referring to his moves to restore peace in the subcontinent as then prime minister through “bus diplomacy”, which brought then Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Lahore in February 1999.

Nawaz Sharif also spoke of how the country’s obsession with India led to an arms race, due to which “Pakistan has suffered immensely”.

The editorial went on to say that Nawaz Sharif chose to conduct the nuclear tests “under pressure from the military and the right wing”.

“Pakistan paid the price for this in the form of international sanctions and increased scrutiny. We have never quite recovered from the virtual economic meltdown since.”

“One consequence of going nuclear was that despite the Kargil war, it became obvious that an all-out war between India and Pakistan had been rendered impossible. The use of nuclear weapons is unthinkable as they are weapons of mass murder.”

“But the downside is that it has focused so much world attention on our nuclear weapons (and the alarmist scenarios of them falling into the wrong hands) that if anything, far from the nuclear weapons safeguarding us, we are charged with guarding them from covetous eyes.”

It observed that the logic of history and geography suggests that Pakistan-India disputes notwithstanding, “there is no escape from civilised relations, economic exchange and dialogue”.