ISLAMABAD, MAR 4 (DNA) –Ambassador of Kazakhstan Barlybay Sadykov has said that his country was keen to diversify ties with Pakistan adding Kazakhstan and Pakistan have a long history of friendly relationship, with their beginning dating back to the early 1990’s.

Pakistan was among the first nations in the world to have recognized Kazakhstan’s sovereignty shortly after demise of the Soviet Union. That was probably the reason of why one of the first international visits of the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev was paid to Pakistan in early 1992.

Ambassador of Kazakhstan expressed these views in an exclusive interview with DNA.

The Ambassador further said at present the manifestation of that development is that Kazakhstan and Pakistan have no any political controversies or misunderstandings, which might obscure a bilateral interaction.

While talking about trade ties he said, the trade cooperation does not meet vast economic potential of two countries and needs intensifying contacts between their business communities.

What is crucial now is to increase their awareness of each other and try to reduce those trade barriers, which may be removed with no harm to economic interests or international commitments of Kazakhstan and Pakistan.

‘Bearing in mind that geographic location and climatic peculiarities make Kazakhstan’s economy differ substantially from that of Pakistan, I am certain that at the very beginning our economies should be rather complimentary than competitive towards each other”.

Kazakhstan he added was able to meet Pakistan’s needs in supplies of mineral resources, namely oil, gas, coal, ore and some others, given the existence of viable transport routes and implementation of regional projects of TAPI and CASA-1000.

Pakistan on its part could be a very competitive supplier of fruits, vegetables, textile and leather-made products, medicines and surgery equipment.

People-to-people contacts are turning to be an extremely important factor in keeping inter-state relationship safe and more predictable in the irreversibly globalizing world. This may also be applied to Kazakhstan-Pak relations.

Currently there is no lack of will to promote contacts between people of Kazakhstan and Pakistan, but a shortage of reliable and effectively dispersed information to be consumed by them for increasing awareness of each other.

The challenging task here is to set up a well-functioning information exchange mechanism to create both in Kazakh and Pakistani societies a positive mindset of each other.

To a question the ambassador said Pakistan is well-known worldwide as agro-industrial country, blessed with very comfortable geographic and climatic environment, allowing reaping the harvest twice, or even thrice a year.

 Therefore, Pakistan is hard to be beaten in the region as importer of fruits and vegetables.

Thus, Pakistan’s vast expertise in the field of agriculture may be well exercised though opening joint Kazakh-Pak enterprises in growing fruits and vegetables, particularly in Kazakhstan, which lacks them due to its climatic specificities, he added.

“I am personally really stunned with ancient culture and history of Pakistan, which are closely inter-related with the ones of Central Asia. Another great asset of Pakistan is its hospitable people, who are to lead the country towards fully deserved brighter future”.

He said “as the Ambassador the more I get to know about Pakistan, the more I get aware of its importance for global politics. So, I am certain that staying and working in Pakistan is a great chance for any diplomat to grow both professionally and intellectually”, he concluded.=DNA

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