In Kabul earlier this year, Prime Minister Singh reaffirmed India's commitment to the Afghan-led reconciliation. And the Indian Government reinforced that commitment last month by supporting a United Nations Security Council resolution that cleared the way for lifting sanctions on insurgents who do reconcile. At the same time, India has rightly expressed concerns about outside interference in the reconciliation process, and we agree with those concerns and are consulting closely with India about that.
We will continue to encourage New Delhi's constructive role. For example, in advocating based on India's own experience that reconciliation, beginning at the very start of the process, must include representatives from a range of political parties and ethnic groups. We also believe Pakistan has an essential role and legitimate interest in this process, and those interests must be respected and addressed. We welcomed Pakistan's decision to participate in a joint peace commission with Afghanistan and in what we call the core group of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States to manage the withdrawal. Achieving lasting peace and security in the region will require a stable, democratic, prosperous Pakistan free from violent extremism. That's in everyone's interest, because Americans, Indians, Pakistanis, and Afghans have all suffered at the hands of violent extremists, and none of us should tolerate a safe haven for terrorists anywhere.
So we look to the Pakistani Government to press insurgents to join the reconciliation process, to prevent Pakistani territory from being used for attacks that destabilize Afghanistan or India and to deny al-Qaida the space to regroup and plan new violence. And beyond India and Pakistan, all of Afghanistan's other neighbors - Russia, Iran, China, the Central Asian states should recommit themselves to the goal of a stable and independent Afghanistan. That means they too must support reconciliation and respect Afghanistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity. That is a pledge that all the countries of the region made nearly a decade ago when they signed the Declaration on Good Neighbourly Relations. The time has come to operationalize that agreement and to create mechanisms that ensure nations will live up to their commitments, and the United States will invest the considerable diplomatic effort needed to help build such support for those outcomes.
This diplomatic and political effort is the first element of our approach, but it will only succeed if it is paired with a strategy to increase economic ties that connect all the countries of the region. Because while many countries, including India, have given generous assistance to Afghanistan, no country, including my own, can afford to provide aid forever. We have to get an economy going. We have to have trade and investment coming. And the Afghan people themselves do not want receive aid forever. An Afghanistan firmly embedded in the economic life of a thriving South and Central Asia would be able to attract new sources of foreign investment and connect to markets abroad, including hundreds of millions of potential new customers in India. And increasing trade across the region would open up new sources of raw material, energy, and agricultural products, creating more jobs in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
But we have a long way to go before we could ever realize that in today's world, because today, an Indian entrepreneur in Chennai who wishes to ship her products to a customer in Kazakhstan has to send them either through China or Iran, thousands of miles out of the way. An Indian business must import cement from Southeast Asia instead of from the flourishing cement industry next door in Pakistan. A traveler going between India and Pakistan not only has a difficult time getting a visa; he also often has to be routed through airports a thousand miles away just to get across the border. Now, we have no illusion about how difficult it will be to overcome the longstanding distrust that holds back economic cooperation, but we also are absolutely convinced this is very much in India's interest, Pakistan's interest, Afghanistan's, and other nations as well.
Historically, the nations of South and Central Asia were connected to each other and the rest of the continent by a sprawling trading network called the Silk Road. Indian merchants used to trade spices, gems, and textiles, along with ideas and culture, everywhere from the Great Wall of China to the banks of the Bosphorus. Let's work together to create a new Silk Road. Not a single thoroughfare like its namesake, but an international web and network of economic and transit connections. That means building more rail lines, highways, energy infrastructure, like the proposed pipeline to run from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, through Pakistan into India. It means upgrading the facilities at border crossings, such as India and Pakistan are now doing at Waga. And it certainly means removing the bureaucratic barriers and other impediments to the free flow of goods and people. It means casting aside the outdated trade policies that we all still are living with and adopting new rules for the 21st century.
I was very encouraged by the reports of the resumption of discussions between India and Pakistan, the meeting between Prime Ministers Singh and Gillani at Mohali, and the forward-looking roadmap produced by the Indian and Pakistani commerce secretaries in April are very important steps. The upcoming meeting of Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers is another chance to make tangible progress. And I was pleased to see Afghanistan and Pakistan commit to implement fully their transit trade agreement. This is an agreement that Afghanistan and Pakistan started negotiating together in 1961. All these years later, they have finally signed it. And we want to see trade begin to move across that border, and then we want to see that trade expanded into Central Asia and India - two-way trade, multiple paths for trade.
Because someday, that entrepreneur here in Chennai should be able to put her products on a track - on a truck or a train that travels unimpeded, quickly, and cheaply through Pakistan, through Afghanistan, to the doorstep of her customer in Kazakhstan. A Pakistani businessman should be able to open a branch in Bangalore. An Afghan farmer should be able to sell pomegranates in Islamabad before he drives on to New Delhi. Or as Prime Minister Singh put it so beautifully, "I dream of a day, while retaining our respective identities, one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore, and dinner in Kabul. That is how my forefathers lived. That is how I want our grandchildren to live." (Applause.)
I couldn't agree more, and neither could you. Now it is just as important as applauding to support the work that must be done to realize that dream. When I look at the potential of the people in this region, I am absolutely convinced you can out-compete, outgrow, out-prosper anybody in the world. But that's why the barriers must come down. When Indian Americans used to come to the United States, their hard work and their success was such a symbol of what was possible. Today, there's migration back from the United States to India, because the opportunity society has arrived here. Pakistani Americans, Afghan Americans, they still come to the United States seeking opportunity. They too deserve an opportunity society. And in order to that, we have to move beyond the past into a present filled with possibility and then to make a future that delivers.
In what I've discussed today, India's growing role in the Asia Pacific and in South and Central Asia, I do so because I think this is the only way forward. Yes, it is ambitious agenda, but we can afford to be ambitious, because when we in the United States and particularly in the Obama Administration look at India, we see, as President Obama said, a nation that is not simply emerging, but has emerged, and a nation with whom we share so many bonds, and one that will be a leader globally in shaping the future we will all inherit.
Now of course, both of our nations being democracies are dealing with challenges that have to be met and require immediate attention. But great nations can do more than one thing at a time. In fact, we can do many things at once by enlisting the powerful participation of our own people - Indian and American businesses, Indian and American academics, Indian and American entrepreneurs, inventors, students. In a democracy, we are all helping to shape our future. That is what sets us apart from other systems and other nations. I mean, it does look a little messier from time to time, but it is the most sustainable way human beings have found to organize themselves, and that's what we must do.
For both America and India, the threats, the perils, the problems are discussed endlessly. Turn on the television, pick up the paper, go on the internet. But I see a much brighter picture because I think there isn't anything we cannot do, and I believe in India's future. This is not, therefore, a time when any of us can afford to look inward at the expense of looking outward. This is a time to seize the opportunities of the 21st century, and it is a time to lead. So I come to Chennai as an admirer of what India has accomplished, someone who, in just the course of the last 18 years, has seen the changes firsthand. There are great forces at work, but there is nothing preordained or inevitable about the future of your country or mine.
Generations before us fought to give us a democracy, fought to build our institutions, fought to overcome the inherent problems of pluralism and diversity, fought to make good the values that we know are essential to the systems that we have built. And now, it is our turn, and it is particularly the turn of the young people who are here today. For each of us to make our contribution, for each of us to work in every way we can not only for our own personal betterment - although that comes in an open society like yours and mine - but to work for the common good, to work for our nation, and to work for a world that is worthy of our dreams. So let us commit to do so. Thank you all very much.
