Agence France Presse

New Delhi, April 8:

Indian and Pakistani newspapers today welcomed the first bus service across the heavily-militarised frontier in disputed Kashmir in almost 60 years and hailed the passengers as heroes for defying Islamic militant threats.

“Two buses. 49 passengers. History,” the Indian Express daily said in its main headline.

“Peace bus makes history,” said the Asian Age, a day after buses carried passengers along the route linking Srinagar in Indian Kashmir and Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani zone, for the first time since 1947. The journeys were undertaken under tight security following an attack on Wednesday by militants on a guest house where passengers were being protected in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.

Pakistani newspapers were more circumspect and focussed on whether the link would help resolve the 58-year-old dispute with New Delhi over Kashmir, which has already caused two of their three wars.

“This is the first concrete manifestation of repeated declarations by leaders in India, Pakistan and Kashmir that they want the LoC to become a line of peace,” said an editorial in Dawn, Pakistan’s oldest English language newspaper.

The News, another major national daily, was more positive, headlining extensive coverage of the event: “Peace wins the day”. It hit out at militant attempts to sabotage the service, and praised the Indian and Pakistani governments.

Status quo on LoC

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will not accept the Line of Control that separates the two divided parts of Kashmir between it and India as a permanent border at any cost, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad has said.

On Thursday, the day that saw the first trans-border Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus service launched, Rashid told the media that President Pervez Musharraf had stated in categorical terms the LoC would not be accepted as the permanent border. Referring to the president’s April 17 visit to India, he said Musharraf would spend two days in India.— AFP