India and Pakistan agree to open second bus route in Kashmir

After yesterday's peace talks, the two countries agree to open a second bus link across Kashmir's line of control. Divisions over the region however run very deep.

New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) - India and Pakistan agreed to open a second bus route linking divided Kashmir, an official said, even as New Delhi used talks between the nuclear rivals to protest attacks by alleged Pakistan-based militants.

The bus link was a small success at two-day peace talks that ended on Wednesday — the third round in a sweeping peace process that has endured despite the allegations and similar accusations that New Delhi is supporting anti-Pakistan insurgents.

The new bus link was the latest in a series of confidence-building measures enacted as part of the peace process.

Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told reporters on Wednesday that the countries hoped to have a bus service linking the towns of Poonch in India's part of Kashmir and Rawalakot on the Pakistani side of the Himalayan territory running by March or April.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since the bloody partition of the subcontinent at independence from Britain in 1947, including two conflicts over Kashmir, divided between them but claimed by both.

But tensions have eased considerably since the start of the peace process in 2004, and last year the two sides opened the first bus link in Kashmir — a service between Srinagar, the main city in India's part of the territory, and Muzaffarabad, the main city on Pakistan's side.

The difficult issue of Kashmir was left for the second day of talks and it was clear at the end of talks that deep divisions remain over the territory, despite hopes that the massive October 8 earthquake in the region would bring them closer.

Mr Khan said the Kashmir "problem is as old as our independence. We should start resolving the problems now." Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf said earlier this month that he was disappointed at the lack of progress in the peace process, and complained that India had not responded sufficiently to his ideas for resolving the Kashmir issue. India already has rejected Mr Musharraf's suggestion for a troop pullout from three key towns in the Indian portion of Kashmir — Srinagar, Kupwara and Baramullah — considered hotbeds of Islamic insurgency.

Mr Saran agreed on Wednesday that India, like Pakistan, wanted to promote the free flow of people, trade and ideas across the Line of Control, the frontier separating the two sides of Kashmir.

But he said "we are not in a position to redraw boundaries, we are not in a position to look at territorial adjustments."

Complicating any talks over Kashmir is the Islamic insurgency that has festered in India's part of the region since 1989 and left about 66,000 people dead. New Delhi says the militants operate from bases in Pakistan's part of Kashmir — an allegation that Islamabad denies. Asked if he believed Pakistani assurances that it opposed terrorism, Saran said: "while some steps may have been taken, these steps are not enough."

• india
• pakistan
• kashmir
• transports
• peace
• war
• bus