Pakistan to grant MFN status to India

Pakistan has, in principle, decided to grant Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said in the National Assembly, according to India's Economic Times.

The statement comes after trade talks in September failed to generate an agreement on MFN status, which India has already afforded Pakistan. 

Though Khar emphasized Kashmir repeatedly in her speech, as usual, everybody knows the drill there.  Pakistan says there can be no talks without Kashmir…  India says Kashmir is "off the table"…. And so on and so on.  Suffice to say, Kashmir will still look exactly the same in 2020.

But trade links could have a lot more impact than a lot more blah blah about confidence building measures.

That said, that impact will depend much more on India buying from Pakistan than selling goods there, just as the "trade-not-aid" policy suggested as a possible course of action for the U.S. would depend on American companies snapping up Pakistani products.

Even in international relations, the customer is always right.