SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 28: The United Religions Initiative (URI) is sponsoring a peace train from India to Pakistan on January 12 and a peace assembly in Multan from January 13 to 16 to promote people to people contact between the two countries.

The San Francisco-based URI with branches in 50 countries, is aimed at promoting global peace and justice through interfaith cooperation. Co-founder of the India-Pakistan Peace Coalition, Ras Siddiqui, told Dawn that the URI project would cost $40,000 dollars of which $10,000 had already been raised while South Asian peace groups here had launched an intensive fund raising campaign to raise the rest $30,000.

The URI's peace train and the assembly will include 50 delegates from Pakistan, 80 from India and 10 from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Korea, Philippines, Indonesia and the US.

Ras Siddiqui said that people-to-people contact was vital to help bring a durable peace in South Asia and such projects would surely strengthen recent peace initiatives between India and Pakistan.

"The peace train would foster alliances for peace building among people in religious traditions and also encourage people and especially youth to visit each other in these countries," he argued.