British Minister for Energy Stephen Timms has hoped the expectations of improvement in Pakistan-Indian relations, generated during the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (Saarc) would be fulfilled in the days ahead.
He was speaking at a Christmas dinner organised by Pakistan National Forum on Monday at Green Street here which is considered a bustling area of Asian business.
"I very much hope those hopes will be fulfilled," Timms who was also Minister for E-Commerce said while referring to the initiative taken by Pakistan and India at the fringes of the Saarc summit in Islamabad to resume their stalled dialogue next month.
Timms heaped praise over Asian community's contribution to the British economy. He said that one out of five British Pakistanis, was self-employed and their earlier generations who migrated here had to toil to create such a place in this society.
Britain will like to learn from the enterprising Asian community who had turned a drab Green Street into a sprawling business centre.
He said that one of the British daily has rightly described the Green Street as "Asian Bond Street" and the credit for it, goes to the creativity of the Asians living here.
Speaking on the occasion a senior Home office official Keith Best said he was planning to visit major cities of Pakistan to see how the people could be facilitated to come to the United Kingdom.
He said that the department would soon send one of its officials to Mirpur to help the people who were interested to come to Britain but he did not elaborate on the terms and conditions in this regard.
Keith said there were millions of people who currently lived away from the countries of their birth.
The present era was the time of migration and no "repressive immigration policy of any state" could last long.
He said Asians have made a great contribution to enrich the multi-cultural society of Britain.
Prospective Candidate for the Tory Party Haroon Rashid eulogised the hard work and initiative of his forefathers who accepted the challenge of coming here and enabled his generation to reach at this stage.
Haroon said that he would do all, he could, to help the Asian community achieve new heights of progress in the British society.
President of Pakistan National Forum Raja Javed said Pakistani expatriates in the UK should work for building bridges between Pakistan and Britain.
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