NEW DELHI, 21 December 2005 — Officials from India and Pakistan met yesterday to discuss conducting a joint survey to demarcate their border in a marshland along the frontier separating the two countries.
India and Pakistan decided to conduct a joint survey of the disputed boundary at Sir Creek, a strip of marshland along their frontier, during talks between then External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh and Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri on Oct. 4. In talks held earlier this month in Rawalpindi, India and Pakistan agreed on a joint survey of boundary pillars.
The two-day talks that began yesterday are to decide the terms of reference for a joint survey. India and Pakistan will also focus on demarcation of maritime and territorial boundaries in the area.
The joint survey will form the basis of negotiations for resolution of the issue. The report will be included in discussions at third round of the composite dialogue process, beginning in January.
Though not considered of any strategic importance, Sir Creek between India’s Gujarat and Pakistan’s Sindh province, is one of the eight contentious issues being discussed by the countries under the composite dialogue process.
The two countries have already carried out a survey of the horizontal line and identified many boundary pillars erected before 1947. The then Kutch and Sindh governments laid the boundary pillars in the land portion in 1925. On independence from Britain, India and Pakistan laid claim to parts of the area.
The Indian delegation to the talks is being led by Brig. Girish Kumar, deputy surveyor general of India, while Maj. Gen. Jameel-ur-Rehman Afridi, Pakistan’s surveyor general, is leading the Pakistani side at the talks in New Delhi, said Navtej Sarna, the external affairs ministry spokesman.
Details of the negotiations were not immediately available.
Although Sir Creek is not considered strategically significant, the lack of a well-demarcated border is a thorny issue, with both sides accusing the other of trespassing and arresting fishermen who inadvertently cross into the each other’s territorial waters.
Progress in India-Pakistan ties is also being marked by increase in bus services between the two nuclear powers. Two-day talks on launching fourth cross-border bus service, as part of their peace process, began yesterday in Lahore, Pakistan. The new route would link Amritsar in India with Nankana Sahib in Pakistan.
The first bus link between New Delhi and Lahore, launched in 1999, was suspended after a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. However, the decision of the two countries to move toward normalization of ties was marked by opening a bus link between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad in April this year.
While the third bus service, connecting Amritsar and Lahore, is scheduled to start operating in the last week of December, agreement regarding the fourth bus service is to be signed in Lahore, sources said.
— Additional input from agencies
