NEW DELHI, 6 May 2005 — India announced a new series of talks with rival Pakistan yesterday, including meetings next week over the launch of new bus services and later in May over several long-running boundary disputes.
“Technical level talks” on a proposed bus service between India’s city of Amritsar and Lahore in Pakistan would get under way on Tuesday in Lahore, said Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna.
The two sides would also be considering a possible service from India to the Sikh shrine of Nankana Sahib in Pakistan, Sarna said.
The Indian and Pakistani defense secretaries would meet in Islamabad May 25-26 for talks on the disputed Siachen Glacier, the scene of a bloody clash between the nuclear-armed neighbors in 1987, the spokesman said. India and Pakistan are engaged in a raft of talks on confidence-building measures at the same time as seeking to settle their festering dispute over Kashmir, trigger of two of their three wars.
India’s announcement of new talks followed a visit to New Delhi last month by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf during which the countries declared their 15-month-old peace process was “irreversible.”
In a joint statement last month in New Delhi, Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to find a solution to the dispute over the Himalayan glaicer of Siachen.
They also vowed to restart efforts to end differences over maritime boundaries in the strategic Sir Creek marshlands off India’s western Gujarat state. Sarna said the neighbors would hold two days of talks starting May 27 in Islamabad on the Sir Creek row.
Islamabad would also host talks next week between Indian coastguards and the Pakistan maritime agency to build better communications, he said. “This is one of the confidence-building measures,” Sarna said.
India last month published a slate of 72 proposals — some old, some new — to spur trust between the countries.
Yesterday’s announcement of talks on the proposed bus services coincided with the third run yesterday of the trans-Kashmir bus linking Srinagar, capital of Indian Kashmir, and Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-held Kashmir.
The two countries are also seeking to work out a way to withdraw forces from the 21,000-foot (6,363-meter) Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest battlefield.
Musharraf said on his Indian visit the rivals should end their dispute over the icy wasteland, where extreme cold has killed more soldiers than enemy fire, so scientists can research effects of global warming on the glacier. India and Pakistan refuse to disclose how many troops they have on Siachen, a deployment that is hugely costly for both sides. But military sources believe Pakistan has 3,000 soldiers on the glacier and that India has 7,000.
