Pakistan extends olive branch to Modi after election victory

Tuesday, 20 May 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

REUTERS: Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, said on Monday (19) that the victory of Narendra Modi, leader of Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the general election would augur well for relationship between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Basit said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had congratulated Modi and invited him to Pakistan, supporting Modi’s agenda of economic revival. “He (Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif) also expressed hope that BJP’s decisive victory would augur well for Pakistan, India relations and he also invited Mr. Modi to visit Pakistan,” he said at a seminar in New Delhi. The alliance led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 336 of the 543 seats in India’s Lower House of parliament, making it the first time in a quarter of a century that the country will not be led by a coalition government. But given their history of mutual suspicion and war, Pakistan remains the challenge most likely to dominate Modi’s foreign policy agenda at least in the short term. Pitching for dialogue with the Modi government in New Delhi, Basit said pursuit of peace in the region is Islamabad’s topmost priority. “The pursuit of peace in the region is our foreign policy’s topmost priority. The second point I would like to make is that peace is in our mutual interest and peace can only be achieved through a peaceful process, through a dialogue progress,” he added. Modi, in fact, vowed continuity in India’s dealings with Islamabad over disputed Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region which Pakistan also claims as its own, but with a rider that peace and cross-border violence can’t go together, demanding trial of 26/11 attackers. “In the past we have seen that the preconditions didn’t work nor they will work in the future. Now it is for us to decide once and for all that whether or not as two democratic countries, we would like to bury the hatchet or will continue to be at daggers drawn indefinitely for all times to come,” said Basit. The neighbours have fought three wars over Kashmir, the third in 1999, a smaller conflict that was undeclared. India never fully quelled a separatist insurgency in the part of the region it controls which claimed tens of thousands of lives. New Delhi has accused Islamabad of aiding and abetting militancy in Kashmir which Pakistan denies and calls it an indigenous arm-struggle with the Indian Government.

Decisive election outcome ‘credit positive’: Moody’s

REUTERS: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s resounding election win is credit positive for India as it boosts the prospect that a stable government will address the country’s economic challenges, Moody’s Investor Service said on Monday.

Moody’s rates India “Baa3”, the lowest investment-grade rating with a “stable” outlook. “The completion of the election will allow stalled policies relating to the corporate and infrastructure sectors to resume, a credit positive for the country’s corporates,” said Vikas Halan, Vice President and Senior Credit Officer at Moody’s, said in a statement. Rival rating agency Standard & Poor’s also rates India at the lowest investment grade, but with a “negative” outlook. Investors are increasingly betting on a turnaround in the Indian economy after the Narendra Modi-led BJP and its allies won a more decisive-than-expected 334 seats in India’s 543-member lower house in vote counting on Friday. “Closer co-ordination between the central and state governments on clearances for mega projects and land use, two proposals outlined in the BJP’s manifesto, would address investment delays,” Halan wrote. India’s economy is growing at less than 5%, its slowest in a decade.