Pakistan and India signed an agreement on Wednesday to launch a cross-border bus service, reports the Pakistani daily The Nation. Regular operation of the Amritsar-Nankana Sahib bus service will commence within a month after a trial run from both sides.
The new bus link is part of efforts that began a year and a half ago to ease long-standing tensions between Pakistan and India, which have fought three wars since gaining independence in 1947.
“It has been decided that the trial run will take place from Amritsar on January 27, 2006 and from Nankana Sahib on January 29, 2006,” said Pakistan’s Additional Secretary Ministry of Communication Muhammad ‘Abbas, and India’s Joint Secretary of Transport Saroj Kumar Desh, in a joint statement issued after the conclusion of their two-day meeting.
It was also decided that the Lahore-Amritsar bus service would commence on January 20, 2006 from Lahore and on January 24, 2006 from Amritsar.
The earthquake in East Asia, which claimed tens of thousands of lives three months ago, struck hard in Kashmir, on the border between the two countries. Some 30,000 people from both sides of the border were killed.
“It will certainly help in furthering the peace process,” said former Indian foreign secretary and ambassador to Washington Lalit Mansingh a few days after the quake. Immediately following the disaster, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf spoke by telephone and discussed future cooperation between their countries.