Pakistan, India agree another cross-border bus
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-11 20:08

Pakistan and India agreed on Wednesday to start a bus service between the cities of Lahore and Amritsar in the latest sign of warming ties between the nuclear rivals.

Last month they opened a bus link across a ceasefire line dividing the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir in a move hailed as the most tangible outcome of a peace process begun over a year ago.

The South Asian neighbours, who have gone to war three times since independence from Britain in 1947, have engaged in a series of confidence building measures, including developing people-to-people contacts, before tackling the core issue of Kashmir.

Dates for the new cross-border bus service would be decided at another round of talks in New Delhi in two months' time, Mohammad Abbas, additional Secretary, Pakistan's Ministry of Communications, said after two days of discussions in Islamabad.

Amritsar in India and Lahore in Pakistan, are the twin cities of old Punjab, one of the richest provinces of pre-Partition India.

A joint statement said the sides would also discuss plans for another bus between Amritsar and Nankana Sahib, a Sikh shrine near Lahore in eastern Pakistan.

On a separate issue, Pakistani and Indian officials said they would meet again to resolve differences over a dam India was building in disputed Kashmir.

Pakistani officials will visit the site of the 330-megawatt Kishanganga hydro-power project that Islamabad says violates a 1960 Indus Water Treaty in a bid to resolve the row.

Separately, the World Bank on Tuesday named Raymond Lafitte, a Swiss professor, to mediate over another dam India was building in Kashmir. Pakistan opposes its construction.

Indian and Pakistani officials also discussed how to expedite the release of fishermen regularly arrested by both sides for straying into each others' territorial waters.

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