Kishanganga dam talks fail; issue may be taken to WB
By Our Staff Reporter
LAHORE, Nov 14: Pakistan is likely to move the court of arbitration after the latest round of talks with India over the Kishanganga dam project ended in failure, Syed Jamaat Ali Shah, Pakistan’s Commissioner on the Indus Basin Treaty, said here on Monday.
Mr Shah told Dawn upon his return from India on Monday that the mission was a “complete failure,” at least at the commission level.
The commission, he said, would now recommend that the government initiate the legal process and move the World Bank for arbitration, as it had done in the case of Baglihar dam.
Mr Shah said Islamabad could still take it up with Delhi (at the government level) before going to the World Bank. But one thing was certain that the commission had failed to resolve the crisis, he said.
The failure had been made part of the minutes of the meeting which were signed on Sunday afternoon. Mr Shah said that India had wanted to sign the minutes of the meeting through correspondence, but he “refused and stayed back for another day to make the failure part of record”.
India has failed to address all six objections that Pakistan had raised during the decade-long negotiations.
“Pakistan has no other option but to resort to legal proceedings under the Article 9/2 of the Indus Basin Treaty, which allows it to go for the court of arbitration.”
