Pakistan hopes for better relations

Press, 6 November 1984, Page 8

Pakistan hopes for better relations

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi The president of Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia ulHaq said yesterday that his country looked for a fresh, dynamic approach to relations with neighbouring India under its young Prime Minister, Mr Rajiv Gandhi. General Zia said Mr Gandhi, bom only three years before the bloody 1947 partition of the British-ruled subcontinent, was not part of the prejudices of that time. “It is natural to expect a fresh, young, dynamic approach to a chronic problem,” he said. General Zia, who was in New Delhi for the funeral of Mrs Indira Gandhi, said that Pakistan was anxious that a recent worsening in relations between India and Pakistan should improve. Ties between the two countries, which have fought three wars in 37 years, have loosened over American arms sales to Pakistan which India regards as a threat to its security. “We want peace,” said General Zia. “I have come here to reaffirm not only our desire to normalise relations but to further im-

prove them. It is in the interests of both our nations to be as good friends as possible.” He said that relations could not be improved by a dramatic gesture by either side, only through talking out problems. He rejected Indian suggestions that Pakistan played a part in the unrest caused by Sikh extremists and offered any help New Delhi required to solve the problem.

Describing his contacts with Mrs Gandhi as interesting and encouraging, General Zia said that he had great respect and regard for the woman who ruled India for two of its three wars with Pakistan. “Mrs Gandhi is gone. She has gone into history,” he said. In Pakistan, newspaper, editorials yesterday condemned the wave of antiSikh violence in India and warned it could shake the countiy’s foundations. “This is an example of the law of the jungle,” said the Lahore daily “Nawa-i-Waqt.” "It is not the work of citizens of a state which tells the world abouts its secularism,” it said. “Jang,” Pakistan’s larg-est-selling national daily, said the killings had shown how weak India’s democratic framework was. “Chances for the Sikhs to remain part of the Indian nation are bleak,” he said. “India’s other minorities will be affected, have already been affected, by recent events.”