Pak envoy won’t return till issues are resolved
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s envoy to India, who was called back to Islamabad for consultations over the alleged harassment of its diplomats and their families in New Delhi, is unlikely to return to his posting until the situation improves, officials said.
Islamabad has also decided not to send commerce minister Pervaiz Malik to a WTO meeting being hosted by New Delhi on March 19-20. The decision to boycott the meeting was taken at the “highest level,” The Express Tribune newspaper reported, citing an official it didn’t name.
Pakistan high commissioner Sohail Mahmood was called back for consultations on bilateral relations on Thursday because of “non-stop harassment of families of the diplomats”, foreign office spokesman Mohammad Faisal said. Officials here said Mahmood, who arrived on Friday evening, was not expected to return until the situation improves.
WASHINGTON : The US has said it expects “free, fair and reciprocal” trade with India, and acknowledged it could cause the “most friction” in ties between the two countries which are otherwise on a “very strong footing”.
Although the US government committed to “expanding the strategic partnership,” President Donald Trump has railed against Indian tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles and threatened to impose “reciprocal taxes”. On Wednesday, his administration challenged a bunch of Indian export subsidies at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Trade has been the thorniest issue in India-US ties for a long time, traversing administrations, as has been acknowledged privately by officials of both sides. But Trump’s recent public attacks appear to have added a new edge to the differences, demonstrating it as a new low.
“If you had a point … (in) the relationship where you had the most friction, it certainly would be on the trade side,” a senior administration official told reporters on Friday, acknowledging differences on the issue.
But the official defended them, seeking perspective. There have been “concerns raised about the trade deficit with India” and, as has been stated by the President. There are no tariffs on Indian motorcycles imported into the United States while India levies 50% import duty on Harley-Davidsons.
India is among a group of countries with whom the United States has a trade deficit. But the $30.8 billion deficit in 2016 is quite low compared to China’s $385 billion, but enough to put it on Trump’s radar, as a country responsible for the combined $800 billion trade deficit he has promised to wipe out.
The deficit has dipped recently, which the official acknowledged, based on massive oil and gas imports ordered by India from the United States. And it is likely to go down further because of other high-value imports, such as the order of civilian aircraft ordered by private Indian airlines companies. (SpiceJet plans to buy over 100 planes from Boeing.) Trump brought it up in his joint news conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last June: “I was pleased to learn about an Indian airline’s recent order of 100 new American planes, one of the largest orders of its kind, which will support thousands and thousands of American jobs.”