KARACHI: Pakistan released 55 Indian fishermen yesterday, 15 of them teenagers, as a “goodwill gesture” to mark Independence Day in India.
The release is part of an understanding between the nuclear-armed rivals to free citizens who mistakenly stray into each other's waters.
“Some 55 Indian fishermen have been released from our jail on the instructions of the government,” said Nazeer Husain Shah, superintendent of Malir district prison in Karachi.
“Those released include 15 teenage boys,” he told AFP.
The Indians were presented with flowers and gifts, then bused to the eastern city of Lahore, from where they would cross the Wagah border.
Officials say 100 Indian fishermen are still in Pakistani jails and 250 Pakistanis in Indian prisons. Ayaz Soomro, law minister for the southern province of Sindh on the Arabian Sea, said the releases were “a goodwill gesture”. “We hope our neighbours reciprocate in the same spirit and release Pakistani prisoners from their jails,” he said.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided by a heavily militarized Line of Control and which both countries claim in full.
Pak-Afghan team to probe border shelling
Afghanistan and Pakistan have agreed to send a joint military team to investigate a recent surge in cross-border attacks that have soured relations between the two neighbours, Kabul said yesterday.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari took the decision on the sidelines of an Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Karzai's office said.
Pakistan said the two leaders “discussed bilateral ties, the regional situation, the peace process in Afghanistan and other issues of mutual concern”, but declined to go into specifics. Afghans say that thousands of rockets and heavy artillery shells have landed on their territory in recent months, blaming Pakistan for the alleged attacks.
The cross-border violence has become a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan, where many are deeply suspicious of Pakistan and its historic ties to the Taleban, which is now fighting a 10-year insurgency against Karzai's government.
Pakistan says groups of Pakistani Taleban sheltering in Afghanistan have infiltrated the border to resume attacks on its security forces.
Karzai asked Pakistan “to immediately end these attacks” and warned that if they continued, they would negatively impact “Afghanistan's friendship with Pakistan”.
His office said Zardari agreed to assign a joint military delegation to visit the border and investigate the shelling.
Zardari's office said: “The two leaders were unanimous in the view that all groups should shun violence and join the peace process in Afghanistan, for peace and stability of the region.”
The apparent agreement to investigate the border violence comes after officials on both sides said Pakistan allowed an Afghan delegation to meet a senior Taleban leader being held in a Pakistani jail.
Pakistan's 2010 arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a powerful military chief who has been described as the Taleban's second in command, had been blamed by Kabul for sabotaging peace initiatives.
