(New Nation-Bangladesh) Shahid Alam - Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres has called for an open dialogue between Pakistan and Israel, rather than secretive meetings between functionaries of the two countries. And he underpinned his proposition with the remark that if India and Pakistan can have open dialogue, there is no reason why Tel Aviv and Islamabad cannot. Given the state of non-relation between the two for over half a century, that is a solicitation for normalizing relations carrying profound significance. And since, as of this writing, there has been no comment, crucially none negative, from Islamabad, Peres' proposal gets weightier. So how realistic will Peres' proposal turn out to be in practice? The chances will not be that dim, especially if Sharon and Abbas come to an understanding that an independent Palestine acceptable to the Palestinians is in the offing. Then Pakistan can have no problem in conducting official state-to-state relations with Tel Aviv, since it stands to also gain economically as well as strategically, not the least of which will be to balance India's ties with Israel.
2005-02-02 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive