Islamabad: The home minister of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, Meer Zia ullah Langau, has said the provincial government wants to set up a mechanism in consultation with Kabul to resolve land disputes on the border with neighboring Afghanistan which Islamabad is currently fencing, Pakistani media reported on Wednesday.

Pakistan is close to completing fencing of its nearly 2,600-kilometer porous border with Afghanistan where some settlements or villages are spread on both sides of the border, leading to land disputes.

Afghanistan opposes the barrier along the disputed frontier and protests it will divide families and friends along the Pashtun tribal belt straddling the colonial-era Durand Line drawn up by the British in 1893.

To review construction of the fence, Langau chaired a high-level meeting in the provincial capital Quetta on Tuesday and said the federal government was building the fence to maintain law and order and check illegal movements and smuggling.

“A mechanism would be evolved in consultation with the Afghan government for addressing the matter of lands belonging to villagers living on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border,” Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper quoted Langua as saying. “Such pieces of land stand divided due to fencing by Pakistan to stop illegal crossing by citizens from both sides as well as to keep an eye on terror suspects.”

Early this month, the Pakistan army spokesperson told reporters fencing on the border with Afghanistan would be completed by the mid of this year. Construction of the fence started in 2017.