Pakistani commerce chief calls for opening trade with India
Pakistani commerce chief calls for opening trade with India/node/2028746/pakistan
Pakistani commerce chief calls for opening trade with India
A Pakistani paramilitary soldier stands guard as Indian trucks carrying goods enter the Pakistan-India Wagah border post on November 24, 2011. (AFP/File)
ISLAMABAD: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Commerce, Abdul Razak Dawood, has said Pakistan needs to open trade with archrival India, saying that it would be “very beneficial” for the country.
Pakistan’s cabinet last April put off allowing imports of cotton and sugar from neighboring India until Delhi reviewed its 2019 move to revoke the Kashmir region’s special status. Earlier, in an effort to cool local demand and prices, Pakistan’s Economic Coordination Committee (ECC), the country’s top economic decision-making body, had given the go-ahead for the imports, which would have ended nearly two years of trade suspension between the nuclear-armed rivals. But the foreign minister announced the next day the decision had been deferred after a “consensus opinion.”
“As far as the ministry of commerce is concerned, its position is to do trade with India. And my stance is that we should do trade with India and it should be opened now,” Dawood was quoted by Pakistan's Dawn newspaper as telling media on Sunday at an exhibition by the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan. “Trade with India is very beneficial to all, especially Pakistan. And I support it.”
India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. Both control parts of the region but claim all of it.
The announcements about deferring the trade of cotton and sugar last year had come amid a gradual thawing between the two neighbors after their militaries released a rare joint statement in February 2021, announcing a ceasefire along the Kashmir border.
Pakistan was one of the leading buyers of Indian cotton until 2019, when Islamabad banned imports of goods from India after New Delhi revoked the special status of its portion of the Kashmir region.
Pakistani buyers have reportedly already been making inquiries about buying Indian sugar and cotton, which is being offered at lower prices than supplies from other countries.
Indian traders say they have been offering Indian white sugar at $410 to $420 a tonne on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, far lower than the domestic price of $694 quoted in Pakistan.
According to a commerce ministry document seen by Reuters, Pakistan’s cotton industry has been grappling with a shortage, requiring the import of up to six million bales of cotton to meet the shortage this financial year.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar arrived in Kabul on Saturday for a day-long visit to discuss Islamabad’s security concerns, trade and investment opportunities with Afghanistan amid strained ties between the neighbors.
His visit takes place amid surging militancy in Pakistan, which Islamabad blames on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant outfit. Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of providing them sanctuaries, allegations that Kabul has repeatedly denied.
Dar’s visit to Kabul also takes place as Pakistan intensifies its campaign to deport what it says are “illegal immigrants,” mostly Afghan nationals, which it has blamed without evidence for being involved in suicide attacks and militancy in the country. Pakistan’s deportation drive has further soured ties between the two nations.
“At the invitation of Acting Afghan Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar @MIshaqDar50, arrived in Kabul today for a day-long visit,” Pakistan’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement.
Dar was welcomed upon his arrival by Dr. Mohammad Naeem, Afghanistan’s deputy minister for finance and administration, Mufti Noor Ahmad, the director-general of Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, Chief of State Protocol Faisal Jalali and officials of the Pakistan mission in Afghanistan.
The deputy prime minister will meet Afghanistan’s Prime Minister Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, Acting Deputy Prime Minister for Administrative Affairs, Mullah Abdul Salam Hanafi and hold in-depth talks with Muttaqi, the Pakistani foreign office said.
Speaking to the state-run Pakistan Television before leaving for Kabul, Dar acknowledged there has been “coldness” in Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s ties in recent years.
“I believe the security of Pakistan, its people, their lives and properties, is very important,” Dar said. “So one of our concerns is regarding terrorism, which we will discuss.”
He said there is also immense potential for economic, trade and investment opportunities between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Our connection with Central Asian states can be established through rail links but that’s not possible unless Afghanistan becomes a partner in this,” he said.
Dar’s visit is seen as a continuation of Pakistan’s efforts to engage with Afghanistan despite frosty ties, and its aim to address mutual concerns and explore avenues for cooperation with the country.
Italian court upholds life sentence for parents of Pakistani woman killed by family
Court awarded death sentence to couple for killing Pakistani teen daughter in 2021 for refusing arranged marriage
So-called honor killings are common in Pakistan, where family members kill women who don’t follow traditions
Updated 19 April 2025
AP
ROME: An Italian appeals court Friday upheld life sentences for a Pakistani couple convicted of murdering their 18-year-old daughter in a so-called honor killing after she refused an arranged marriage.
The case shocked many Italians and became a symbol of the brutal mistreatment of immigrant women who rebel against inflexible family rules.
The appeals court in the northern city of Bologna said that Saman Abbas, whose body was found at a farmhouse in 2022, 18 months after she disappeared, was killed with the participation of the whole family.
The court upheld a life sentence for both the teenager’s father, Shabbir Abbas, and her mother, Nazia Shaheen. It also sentenced to life in prison two cousins who had been previously cleared by a lower court.
Saman’s uncle, Danish Hasnain, was also sentenced to 22 years in prison for his involvement in the murder. He had been previously given a 14-year sentence.
The court case, in Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, became the most high-profile of several criminal investigations in Italy in recent years dealing with the slaying or mistreatment of immigrant women or girls who rebelled against their family’s insistence that they marry someone chosen for them.
So-called honor killings are common in Pakistan, where family members and relatives sometimes kill women who don’t follow local traditions and culture or decide to marry someone of their own choice.
Saman Abbas’ body was dug up in November 2022 in an abandoned farmhouse near the fields where her father worked in northern Italy. Italian prosecutors contend the woman was murdered by her family on May 1, 2021.
A few days later, her parents flew from Milan to Pakistan.
Saman Abbas’ father was later arrested in Pakistan and extradited to Italy for prosecution. Her mother was convicted in absentia but was arrested in May last year after three years on the run.
Abbas’ uncle, two cousins, her father and her mother went on trial first in February 2023. All the defendants have denied wrongdoing.
Saman Abbas had emigrated as a teenager from Pakistan to the farm town of Novellara in Italy’s northern region of Emilia-Romagna. She quickly embraced Western ways, including shedding her headscarf and dating a young man of her choice. In one social media post, she and her Pakistani boyfriend were shown kissing on a street in the regional capital, Bologna.
According to Italian investigators, that kiss enraged Abbas’ parents, who wanted her to marry a cousin in Pakistan.
The young woman was last seen alive on April 30, 2021 a few hundred meters (yards) away from where her body was discovered in surveillance camera video as she walked with her parents on the watermelon farm where her father worked.
Abbas had reportedly told her boyfriend that she feared for her life because of her refusal to marry an older man in her homeland.
An autopsy revealed a broken neck bone, possibly caused by strangulation.
In 2019, Italy made coercing an Italian citizen or resident into marriage, even abroad, a crime covered under domestic violence laws.
Following Abbas’ disappearance, Italy’s union of Islamic communities issued a religious ruling rejecting forced marriages.
KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), a key member of the ruling coalition government, this week threatened to withdraw its support for the government if Islamabad did not back down from its controversial decision to construct new canals on the Indus River, amid fears of the project triggering water shortages in the country’s southern Sindh province.
Pakistan’s federal government has launched an ambitious project that aims to build canals across the country’s four provinces, which it says will help irrigate millions of acres of barren land and prevent food insecurity in the country. The move has triggered protests in Sindh where nationalist parties believe the initiative would cause water shortages, while critics say the project was planned without consent from stakeholders.
The PPP emerged as the second-largest political party after the controversial 2024 general election in Pakistan. It helped Shehbaz Sharif get elected as Pakistan’s prime minister for a second time and settled for the presidency and the governorship in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provinces, areas where it performed poorly in the national polls. If the PPP withdraws its support, Sharif’s coalition government would no longer have the majority in parliament.
“Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has taken a resolute stance, emphatically calling on the federal government to immediately abandon its controversial plan to construct six new canals on the Indus River,” the party’s media cell said in a statement on Friday.
“He warned that if the project is not abandoned, it will no longer be possible for the PPP to continue supporting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government,” the statement added.
Bhutto Zardari was speaking at a rally organized by the PPP in Sindh’s Hyderabad city. Speaking to charged supporters of the party, Bhutto Zardari said he would stand with the people “if I am ever forced to choose between the government and the people.”
The PPP chairman said his party does not believe in “opposition for the sake of opposition” and it is opposing the controversial canal project because it poses a threat to the federation.
He said that at a time when militant organizations were increasing attacks in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and southwestern Balochistan provinces, the government has stirred a matter that threatens people with “death by thirst.”
Bhutto Zardari criticized Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party and its governments, calling their policies anti-farmer and anti-agriculture. He questioned the logic to build more water canals in the country when Pakistan was already suffering from a water crisis.
“Let the government stop this canals plan, and we will present a 50-year roadmap for agricultural development,” he said. “Why would I not want to see progress in Tharparkar and Cholistan? But I will never compromise on the River Indus.”
The PPP chairman said the party would hold a protest rally in Sindh’s Sukkur city on Apr. 25 against the controversial project.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign office spokesperson recently acknowledged that some “outstanding issues” between Islamabad and Dhaka were discussed this week amid reports of Bangladesh seeking an apology from Pakistan over alleged war crimes committed in 1971.
Bangladesh and Pakistan were two parts of the same country from 1947 till 1971 till the former seceded after a bloody war. Bangladesh says about three million people were killed and thousands of women were raped during the war by Pakistani soldiers, allegations that Islamabad rejects.
Pakistan and Bangladesh started their first Foreign Office Consultations (FOC) in 15 years in Dhaka on Thursday, signaling a thaw in relations long strained by historical grievances and regional alignments. Responding to a question about Dhaka seeking an apology from Pakistan for the alleged massacre in 1971 during the recent talks, Pakistan’s foreign office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said a “torrent of fake news or sensational news” was trying to undermine ties between the two nations.
“Some outstanding issues were indeed discussed during the consultations,” Khan said during the weekly press briefing on Friday.
“However, both sides stated their respective positions on them in an environment of mutual understanding and respect.”
He said the discussions were held in a “cordial and constructive” manner, saying that talks between the two sides being held after a gap of 15 years was a testimony to the existing goodwill and cordiality between Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The latest meetings between Pakistani and Bangladeshi officials come amid significant political shifts in Bangladesh following the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid in a popular student uprising last year.
Hasina’s government was hostile toward Pakistan but closely allied with India, where she remains exiled. While her removal from office was followed by the cooling of relations between Dhaka and New Delhi, exchanges with Islamabad have started to grow.
Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar is scheduled to visit Bangladesh at the end of the month, the first such visit by a Pakistani foreign minister since 2012.
KARACHI: Pakistani artists have been receiving increasing international recognition, but many still grapple with limited opportunities and visibility at home, a participant at a major Gulf art fair said this week.
Her comments coincided with Art Dubai 2025, the Middle East’s leading contemporary art fair, where 10 Pakistani artists are exhibiting their work this year.
The event, running since 2007, draws galleries and collectors from across the globe and has become a vital platform for people with creative abilities in places like Pakistan.
“It’s wonderful that we as artists who have been invisible because of the greater struggles of [our] country are visible through this platform in the Gulf,” said Faiza Butt, a London-based Pakistani artist currently attending the fair, told Arab News over the phone.
Artist Faiza Butt poses against the backdrop of her artwork ‘The Male Figure’ during the Art Dubai 2025 preview at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai on April 17, 2025. (Photo courtesy: Handout/Grosvenor Gallery)
“It’s really a matter of pride that despite all the odds, Pakistani artists continue to appear, and work and make themselves visible, especially female artists.”
Butt maintained Pakistani artists are shaped by the country’s complex realities, adding that is what gives their work its depth.
“Our social and political struggles really feed the artists’ imagination,” she said. “Art doesn’t come from a happy place. So one of the reasons our artists are so strong is because our country has gone through a great deal of strife.”
She also credited the country’s mature art education institutions, such as the National College of Arts in Lahore and the Indus Valley School of Arts in Karachi, for nurturing generations of artists despite systemic challenges.
Artwork ‘The Male Figure’ by Pakistani artists Anwar Saeed and Faiza Butt on display by Grosvenor Gallery during the Art Dubai 2025 at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai. (Photo courtesy: Handout/Grosvenor Gallery)
Karachi-based visual artist Sana Arjumand, who is also exhibiting at the fair, echoed similar views.
“There is now more and more interest coming into Pakistani art because we are really making very good art,” she said.
“Because of so many different experiences here [in Pakistan], we have that informed kind of making of art. It’s more vibrant and alive. It stands out as well — that is why more and more interest is coming here.”
Arjumand, who studied painting at NCA, said her early work focused on self-reflection but has since evolved to include themes of Sufism, mysticism and human interconnectedness with nature.
Her new work, presented at the fair, explores the idea that human behavior mirrors elements in the natural world.
“It’s for everyone,” she said. “It has a storyline that anybody can relate to.”
A total of ten Pakistani artists, including one posthumously, are featured in the fair’s Contemporary Art section. Among them is the late Sadequain, whose pioneering calligraphy and figurative works helped define Pakistan’s post-Partition art movement and continue to influence generations of artists.
Sana Arjumand’s painting ‘The Perfect Mirror’ on display by Aicon Gallery at Booth E5 as they set up for the Art Dubai 2025 preview at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai on April 16, 2025. (Photo courtesy: Handout/Sana Arjumand Studio)
Also exhibiting are Rasheed Araeen, a Karachi-born conceptualist known internationally for his contributions to British minimalist and postcolonial art, and Imran Qureshi, whose fusion of classical Mughal miniature techniques with contemporary themes has earned him acclaim worldwide.
Other featured names include Anwar Saeed, celebrated for his explorations of identity and sexuality, and Shezad Dawood, a London-based multidisciplinary artist with Pakistani and Indian heritage.
Butt is being represented by Grosvenor Gallery in London, which is exhibiting her work alongside that of Anwar Saeed under a shared curatorial concept focused on representations of the male form.
“The female figure is represented enough in the arts,” said Butt. “Anwar and I both discuss the male form but with our own unique politics based on our unique ethnography. But we are both Pakistanis, and there are overlaps in our concerns.”
She will also deliver a talk on behalf of Saeed, reflecting on his practice and political engagement through art.
Despite global attention, Butt stressed that Pakistan lacks the institutional and financial infrastructure to support a thriving art scene.
“Art is a very priced project, and Pakistan cannot afford having art fairs or a very established art market,” she said. “Pakistani artists get absorbed by galleries from other countries.”
She described Art Dubai as a great opportunity for artists in her country.
“Dubai is a very stable financial hub of the Gulf region,” she continued. “It has welcomed a great deal of migration from India and Pakistan. You get a diverse audience. It’s a beautiful coming together, in a positive way, of ideas, culture and exchange of thought.”
