At Wednesday's dinner hosted for his Pakistan counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh highlighted the need for both nations working together on the international stage.
Dr. Singh indicated India's willingness to resume sporting links between the two countries, a move that will end Pakistan's exclusion from hosting cricket matches.
“Cricket has become a uniting factor and I think one thing which we can agree is that the sporting links between our two countries should be normalised as early as possible,” he responded to the hope expressed by Mr. Gilani in this regard.
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With both countries placed strategically in the region, they should work together to exchange views, he noted.
Dr. Singh mentioned the earthquake and tsunami havoc in Japan and underlined need for joint humanitarian assistance and disaster relief preparedness.
“What has happened in Japan is unthinkable. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan was followed by nuclear tragedy. But in this increasingly integrated world, peace and prosperity are both indivisible. And we are neighbours. Destiny requires that we should find cooperative solutions to all the problems that we face,” he said.
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Referring to the upheaval in West Asia, where both have enormous stakes, he expressed the hope that both the countries would “evolve a cooperative strategy on how to deal with the highly uncertain regional and global environment.”
He said:
“We live in the world of great uncertainty. What is happening in the West Asia — none could imagine only a month or two ago ... if oil prices rise, if there is unrest in West Asia it would affect both of us enormously.
“It is, therefore, very important that the two countries should increasingly look at all these developments from the point of view of our peoples' needs, their aspirations and how working together we can find cooperative strategies to deal with these massive challenges that we face.”
At the same time, he wanted both sides to give momentum to last year's Thimphu Declaration, which wanted to “create a new climate in which cooperative models of thinking will flourish.”
Dr. Singh identified poverty, ignorance and disease as the biggest enemies of both the nations. These could be jointly fought “if we work together to find cooperative solutions, if we do not allow ancient animosities to affect the possibility of working together in the contemporary setting of our region and the world.”
The Indian leadership was comfortable working with Mr. Gilani as he came from the family of Mian Mir, who laid the foundation stone for the Golden Temple.
“I sincerely hope and pray that under your distinguished leadership, democracy will flourish in Pakistan. And that we will find peaceful and productive ways of engaging our two countries in the diverse areas, which have enormous bearing on the future of our two countries,” Dr. Singh observed.