This was to be his first visit to the sprawling southern Pakistani port city, once home to a large number of those who had migrated to Pakistan from India at the time of the division of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947.
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Bambawale, assumed charge as the High Commissioner to Pakistan in January this year.
He also said while India and Pakistan must certainly discuss the entire range of issues, they must keep their focus on economy which he described as a “low-hanging fruit”.
As diplomats at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and the Prime Minister Office went into a spin, communications between New Delhi and Karachi where Bambawale was residing continued, and finally it was at 5pm in the evening on Tuesday that a statement came from New Delhi came.
Even though Pakistan’s envoy here made provocative comments about Kashmir – while in Delhi on August 14 – Islamabad, it seems, can’t handle a situation where the Indian envoy there does the same. These statements from the Indian High Commissioner are a much-needed reprieve from the jingoistic point scoring that has lately characterised the bilateral relations of the two countries.
At a separate interactive session organised by the Karachi Council on Foreign Relations earlier this week, Mr Bambawale had taken a swipe at Pakistan over its interference in Kashmir, saying people living in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones at others.
Bambawale was to address business community at Karachi today.
The incident of discourtesy involved the Karachi Chamber of Commerce where a speech on India-Pakistan trade ties by Mr. Bambawale was cancelled barely an hour before the event was to take place on Tuesday.
“There is no option but to do it step by step”, he said.
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Bambawale said the problem with China-Pakistan Economic Corridor was that it went through Pakistani Kashmir whose ownership is disputed by Islamabad and New Delhi. Basit has reportedly been summoned over cancellation of the Indian High Commissioner’s Karachi event.
