Top businessman Dhirubhai Ambani, Reliance Industries founder, for instance, has become a great advocate of friendship between India and Pakistan. He is certainly not interested in winning the Nobel Prize for Peace, he says. He is interested in peace because he wants an even fatter bank account, and that is an excellent reason. Peace must bring a dividend to attract motivators. But they had time enough to make money with each other.
Money is a very strong cement for trust.
When Iran, Pakistan and India begin to make money out of their gas pipeline, improving the lives of countless millions in the process, then the peace dividends will become a daily fact. There is similar enthusiasm in a section of political and media circles in Pakistan as well. Former senator and federal minister Shafqat Mahmood, for instance, calls it a historic opportunity for peace and asks people to seize it with both hands. There is a certain consistency to Vajpayee's desire for normalization of relations with Pakistan, he points out. He came here in 1978 as foreign minister and later as prime minister.