NEW DELHI, 31 August 2005 — In a fresh boost to the peace process in the subcontinent, India and Pakistan have agreed to release hundreds prisoners held in each other’s jails, a joint statement said yesterday.
“They have ... agreed to release on Sept. 12 all fishermen and civilian prisoners who have completed their sentences and whose national status has been confirmed,” said the statement.
An Indian Home Ministry official said this would affect “hundreds” of prisoners but could not give an exact number.
Within two days of these prisoners marching to freedom, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervez Musharraf would be holding talks on Sept. 14 in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session.
The joint Indo-Pak statement was issued after two days of talks in New Delhi between the home secretaries (senior Interior Ministry officials) of the two countries.
India says there are 1,348 Indians in Pakistani prisons while Pakistan says more than 700 of its nationals are in Indian jails.
Many prisoners, despite having completed their sentences and having their nationalities confirmed, remain in prison due to “animosity and lack of mutual trust” between the two sides, the official said.
“We have made a fairly substantial move forward on various issues, which is an achievement,” Indian Home Secretary V.K. Duggal said of the talks in which the issues of terrorism and drug trafficking were also tackled.
“The talks were held in a friendly and cordial atmosphere and the deliberations were frank and forthright,” said the statement, read out at a press conference by Duggal.
“Both sides reiterated their commitment to combat terrorism and re-emphasized the need for effective steps for the complete elimination of this menace,” it said.
On narcotics, the joint statement said India and Pakistan were satisfied with “the continuing cooperation and exchange of information between the narcotics control agencies of both countries.” An agreement that aims at having “a regular institutional mechanism in place to intensify mutual cooperation and liaison on drug control matters” would be signed shortly, it added.
The meeting was part of a peace process launched in January last year by the archrivals, who have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.
Later the Pakistani delegation led by Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah went to the high-security Tihar jail in New Delhi to visit a group of Pakistani prisoners, the Press Trust of India news agency said.
Duggal said that the two countries had agreed to implement the decisions arrived at by the foreign secretaries of the two countries in December 2004 on prisoners.
They had reiterated their commitment to provide immediate notification of arrests made by either side, provide consular access to all prisoners within three months of arrest and release prisoners immediately after completion of sentence and nationality verification. Underlining the need for cooperation between the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Central Investigation Agency, the two sides agreed that experts from both sides would meet at mutually convenient dates in the near future to work out modalities for implementation of the arrangement for cooperation between the two agencies.
Agreeing to continue discussion within the framework of the composite dialogue process, the two sides reiterated their commitment to combat terrorism.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran leaves today for Islamabad on a three-day visit to hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart Riaz Muhammad Khan on the current status of Indo-Pak relations. Apart from the two foreign secretaries wrapping up the second round of the composite dialogue process, they will discuss the New York Manmohan-Musharraf meeting.
