ISLAMABAD, 12 May 2005 — Pakistan and India yesterday agreed to start two new cross-border bus services, an official said.
The buses will link the northwestern Indian city of Amritsar and the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, and Amritsar and Nankana Sahib — both famous sites for Sikhs.
But they have yet to finalize a starting date. Transport officials are to meet again in New Delhi in two months to iron out the details. The transport officials would decide on the fine print of the deal to run the 56-km service between Amritsar and Lahore.
Mohammed Abbas, leader of the Pakistani delegation, expressed hope the services would start simultaneously. He defended the delay in announcing a date.
“We have to work out certain modalities and as a matter of fact the date depends on the tour operators of the two countries,” Mohammad Abbas told reporters.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said their two countries should start work on setting up the Amritsar-Lahore link when they met in New Delhi last month.
At a summit last month, the countries’ leaders said they looked forward to “an early start” of both services.
In early April, buses started running across divided Kashmir, the Himalayan region at the heart of five decades of enmity between Pakistan and India — the most concrete sign of progress during a year-and-a-half of peace talks. They have also agreed to revive a train service between Munnabao in India and Khokrapar in Pakistan.
But in a reminder of the tensions that persist between the South Asian neighbors, the World Bank announced Tuesday it had appointed an expert to arbitrate in a dispute over a dam India is building in its portion of Kashmir.
Pakistan says the Baglihar Dam would deprive its main agricultural province, Punjab, of water for irrigation and violates the 1960 Indus Water Treaty, which regulates sharing of river waters between the two countries and is brokered by the bank. India had opposed seeking the bank’s help in resolving the dispute.
A statement issued by the bank in Washington said that Raymond Lafitte, a Swiss civil engineer and professor, would address “differences” over the hydropower scheme. The bank said Lafitte’s “determination will be final and binding.”
Separately, senior Pakistani and Indian naval officials held a second round of talks in Rawalpindi about a plan for communication links between Pakistan’s Maritime Security Agency and the Indian Coast Guard.
The links would allow a rapid exchange of information on illegal fishing in each other’s waters, search and rescue, smuggling, drug trafficking and natural disasters.
In recent years, India and Pakistan have arrested hundreds of fishermen who stray inside each other’s territorial waters.
