June 4, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 3, 1424

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NEW DELHI, June 3: Passenger bus services between India and Pakistan are likely to resume from July 1, Delhi Transport Minister Ajay Maken said on Tuesday.

“July 1 is the tentative date — a deadline for making all preparations,” Mr Maken told AFP.

The minister said the proposal to re-start bus links was finalised at a meeting on Tuesday of senior officials of the home and foreign ministries and of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), which runs the service from the Indian side.

The proposal would now be forwarded to the Pakistan authorities for their approval, he said.

A meeting is likely between Indian and Pakistani officials soon to thrash out outstanding issues.

The minister said first among the list of priorities is to buy new buses, as vehicles previously used on the route had been worn out after being switched to domestic services.

“Our chief minister wants state-of-the-art buses and we will choose among the best in the country,” Mr Maken said.

The highly popular bi-weekly Delhi-Lahore service, started in 1999, was stopped soon after a deadly attack on India’s parliament in Dec 2001.

The bus service was inaugurated by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who travelled to Lahore in the first bus in 1999 and subsequently held summit-level talks with then prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Within months of the historic bus ride, India and Pakistan fought a short armed conflict in Kargil, when Kashmir freedom fighters captured strategic mountain peaks.

Even at the height of the four-month conflict, however, the bus service continued.

As part of Vajpayee’s renewed peace initiatives towards Pakistan that began on April 18 and were reciprocated by Islamabad, the two sides decided to revive bus, rail and air links, all of which were halted following the parliament attack.

The 536-kilometre bus journey from New Delhi to Lahore takes approximately 14 hours, crossing into Pakistani territory at the Wagah border in western Punjab state. Wagah is the only road crossing linking the two countries.—AFP