June 11, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, June 10: Pakistan has formally conveyed to India that it is ready to send a delegation next week to discuss and finalise details of resuming Lahore-New Delhi bus links, official sources told Dawn.

“We have communicated to the Indian side that we are ready to send a three-member delegation to New Delhi and proposed the dates of June 18 and 19,” a foreign ministry official told this correspondent.

Pakistan’s Deputy High Commissioner in New Delhi, Mr Munawar Bhatti, communicated the size of the delegation to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs after instructions from the Foreign Office on Tuesday.

The three-member team would be headed by Deputy Managing-Director of Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC), officials said.

The PTDC is responsible for running the bus service from Lahore.

Pakistan’s decision to send the three-member delegation to India followed a communication earlier this month from New Delhi that it was ready to receive a delegation from Islamabad to discuss revival of the passenger bus service.

On June 3, Delhi Transport Minister Ajay Maken said that the bus service between Pakistan and India was likely to re-start from July 1.

The 536-kilometre bus journey between the two cities takes an estimated 14 hours.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee inaugurated the bi- weekly Delhi-Lahore bus service in 1999 that followed summit- level talks with the then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. However, India unilaterally snapped the bus links soon after the Dec 13, 2001, armed attack on its parliament. India blamed Pakistan for sponsoring the attack but Pakistan strongly rejected the allegation.

The decision to restore bus links follows a string of reconciliatory moves after Prime Minister Vajpayee’s April 18 peace talks offer to Pakistan and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali’s April 28 telephonic contact with his Indian counterpart.