NEW DELHI, 29 September 2005 — India and Pakistan yesterday agreed to start a bus service in October linking two cities on either side of their only border crossing as part of an ongoing peace process, an official here said.
The agreement came after two days of talks in the Indian capital. It will be the second bus service crossing India and Pakistan’s international border.
“The trial run of the Lahore-Amritsar bus service being operated by both sides will take place in the second half of October with a view to starting regular bus service in the first half of November,” Dilip Sinha, a joint secretary at the Indian foreign ministry, read from a joint statement.
In April, India and Pakistan agreed on the first bus service to link divided Kashmir in almost 60 years as part of a peace process begun in January 2004.
The Lahore-Amritsar bus, covering 45 kilometers, will link the two countries via the only international land crossing at Wagah in the state of Punjab, divided between India and Pakistan at partition in 1947.
A bus service linking New Delhi and Lahore, originally started in 1999 by former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee but suspended after a 2001 attack on India’s Parliament by suspected Pakistan-backed militants, was restarted in July 2003.
The two sides also said yesterday they would hold further talks on a proposed bus service between Amritsar and the Pakistani town of Nankana Sahib, the site of a Sikh shrine near Lahore. The bus services are part of broader efforts by nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan to normalize relations after coming to the brink of war after the Parliament attack.
“One cannot say that this is a great leap forward but such people-to-people contacts are perhaps as important as the other steps India and Pakistan have initiated to improve relations,” said Rajendra Dayal, a political analyst at Delhi University.
“And if you want to add momentum to such cultural links, then greater economic activity like higher volumes of trade through these transit routes should be allowed by the two countries which will also endorse their commitment to peace,” he said.
“And the bottom line here is that divided families of the two Punjabs, who suffered during our three wars, will benefit by this.”
Siachen Pullout Agreed
India and Pakistan have agreed to withdraw troops from an icy battlefield in the Himalayas but are stuck on verifying each other’s positions before they pull back, the Indian defense minister said yesterday.
“We have agreed, they have agreed to withdraw troops from the present positions. There is no two opinion about it,” Pranab Mukherjee told Reuters in an interview.
But Islamabad does not agree to New Delhi’s demand that the two militaries mark their positions before demilitarizing the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir, he said.
