14 March 2004	Sunday	22 Muharram 1425

PESHAWAR, March 13: The military and the NWFP government are yet to reach at a consensus over the allocation of land for constructing an access road to the Regi Model Town Scheme near Peshawar, sources said.

Officials said that the provincial government had received a fresh proposal to provide for an alternate site for a training facility on the outskirts of the provincial capital in return for the 600-acre Regi firing range.

They said that the provincial government required only 70 acres for the proposed access road to the under-construction township.

General-Officer Commanding of the 11th Corps Maj-Gen Mir Ali Haider, along with the officials of the City Municipal and Development Department, the executing agency, inspected the site on Friday to iron out differences, but they failed to reach an understanding in this regard.

"Both sides cannot make any headway on the issue", an official said on Saturday.

He said that the military authorities had asked for the provision of 1,500 acres at an appropriate location in lieu of transferring of the entire firing range to the provincial government.

The same official accused the military authorities of using delaying tactics, saying the government had requested the military authorities to sell the land at a reasonable price, to delay the deal.

Sources said that the provincial government owned a piece of land at the Shamshato refugee camp near Peshawar that could be offered to the army in this regard.

The CDMD is developing the housing scheme at Regi, which is adjacent to the Khyber tribal region, at an estimated cost of Rs7.16 billion consisting of some 20,000 residential and commercial plots. Construction of roads and laying of the sewerage system at the model town is already underway.

Under the plan, an approach road from the main Jamrud Road via Katcha Garhi and Regi firing range would be built to reduce the distance from 25 kilometres to 2.5 kilometres.

A portion of the link road would pass through the army land.

Initially, the military had asked the CDMD to allocate residential lots in the under construction housing scheme for army personnel on concession rates apart from paying for the required land.