Indo-Pak talks process set to gather momentum

A flurry of India-Pakistan engagements in the coming week will see ties taking off from where they were left before Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf came to India on his visit.

Hopefully, there will be a forward movement on some of the 72 confidence-building measures given to Pakistan by India.

A proposal to open branches of each other's national banks in the two countries will be on the table when Reserve Bank of India Governor YV Reddy visits Islamabad on May 15.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has already expressed Islamabad's interest in opening up branches of the national banks in both countries to begin the process of normalisation on the commercial front.

Reddy's visit will be followed by the defence secretary-level talks on Siachen and Sir Creek, scheduled to be held in Islamabad from May 25 to 28.

A high-level Indian transport delegation will begin talks on May 9 on plans to run a new bus service between Amritsar and Lahore through the Wagah border.

The two countries are committed to running the bus service covering 56 kms between the two bustling cities on both sides of the border as this figured prominently in the joint statement by Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The joint statement also spoke of running bus services between Wagah and Nankana Sahib, the birth place of Guru Nanak, especially during the festival season.

If it materialises, the Amritsar-Lahore bus service will be the third to operate between the two countries. This will be in addition to the bus services between Delhi-Lahore and Srinagar-Muzaffarabad, besides the Lahore-Attari train service.

On the same day, an Indian Coast Guard delegation, headed by its Director-General, Vice-Admiral Arun Kumar Singh, will hold talks with its Pakistani counterpart in Islamabad to discuss an MoU with the Pakistan's Maritime Security Agency.

The two sides will focus on the establishment of communication links between the two organisations and to liberalise procedures for the release of fishermen from each other's countries, caught for straying into alien waters.

Communication links, repatriation of Indian and Pakistani fishermen, and educating them about maritime boundaries.

Besides, the two sides will discuss exchange of information on other important maritime aspects such as search and rescue at sea, natural disasters, calamities, pollution incidents, smuggling and drug-trafficking.