RAWALPINDI, Jan 14: Pakistan and India on Wednesday signed an agreement/protocol for the regulation of bus service between Lahore and New Delhi, for another five years.

The previous agreement, signed in 1999, was scheduled to expire on Feb 16. However, during the last five years the service remained suspended for almost two years because of tension between the two countries.

The Lahore-Delhi bus service restarted in July when the two countries announced some confidence-building measures (CBMs) in an effort to normalise relations.

After the two-day technical level discussions between Pakistan and India in Rawalpindi which concluded on Wednesday Malik Muhammad Habib, the Managing-Director of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) and A.J.S. Sahney, Chairman and Managing-Director of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) inked the agreement/protocol.

Under the fresh agreement the bus service has been extended up to Feb 16, 2009. Besides signing the extension of bus service agreement the two sides also took up issues related to fare structure, return reservation facility, excess baggage, settlement of account and increase in passenger facilities during the two-day talks.

The meeting also agreed to run additional buses on special permission on a case to case basis in order to meet the demand of passengers. This would be subject to mutual concurrence of the two operators, a PTDC spokesman said.

The talks were also attended by the officials from the External Affairs ministries, road transport and highways and also the Delhi government from the Indian side.

From the Pakistan side besides the PTDC MD, representatives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Communications and Interior as well as the Punjab government were also present.