July 30, 2003	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 29, 1424

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PESHAWAR, July 29: Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to use Ground Positioning System (GPS) under the US aegis to work out the coordinates with the help of satellites and match it with maps to sort out their border dispute along the tribal region dividing the two countries, a senior Pakistani official said.

The decision to use the GPS technology, he said, was reached at a technical committee meeting of senior military officers of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States that visited the three disputed sites along the Mohmand tribal region on Tuesday.

The tripartite technical committee, including three military officers from Afghanistan, two military officers each from the United States forces and the Pakistan Army flew into Peshawar to discuss the border dispute that led to recent skirmishes between the two neighbouring countries in recent weeks.

The dispute sparked protests in Afghanistan and an angry mob attacked Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul.

Karzai later apologised for the attack and offered to compensate for the damage caused to the diplomatic mission.

The situation on the border is quiet now after a small skirmish three days ago, the official said, requesting anonymity.

“The GPS technology is being used to work out the coordinates through satellites and match the findings with maps on the ground to see if there has been any intrusion as alleged,” the official said.

He said the committee was given a detailed briefing at the Corps Headquarters, Peshawar, which was also attended by senior Pakistani civil and military officials before they were flown to the border in Mohmand tribal region in a helicopter.

The briefing lasted for about one hour, he further said.

“The Afghans had brought the Russian maps of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the Americans had their own maps and we gave them ours,” he added.

The committee, the official said, was given Pakistan’s stated position on the issue which was that Islamabad decided to send troops to the border area to open up the hitherto inaccessible tribal region, extend the writ of the government, carry out development and bottle up any possible infiltration points for Taliban and Al Qaeda elements.

“It was our choice to go or not to go to the tribal region and we decided it was time to move into the area and bring it back under government control.”

The technical committee was told that Pakistani forces had not crossed the border. “In fact, we are minus one kilometre from the zero-line,” the official maintained.

“This is not a complicated or difficult issue. This is purely a technical matter. If the committee concludes that our forces have strayed into the Afghan territory, we will pull them back. If there is any misunderstanding, we are willing to remove this and make adjustments.

“We have told them Pakistan has never ever been interested in grabbing Afghan territory. We have neither in the past, nor now nor in future any plan to occupy Afghan territory. The border is clearly demarcated and there is no confusion about it,” the official said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai earlier this week reiterated his claim that Pakistani troops had intruded about 600 metres into the Afghan territory but backed down from Afghanistan’s earlier assertion that forces from the neighbouring country had moved 40 kilometres inside Afghanistan.