Pak to distribute Kashmir bus service forms
Agence France Presse
Islamabad, March 13:
Pakistan will issue application forms starting tomorrow for the first bus service in nearly six decades across the military frontier in divided Kashmir, an official said. Thousands of people are expected to seek permission to travel on the historic link between Muzaffarabad in the Pakistani zone of the divided Himalayan territory and Srinagar in India, which is due to begin on April 7. “We have printed some 10,000 application forms initially and if needed more could be printed at an hour’s notice,” Muzaffarabad deputy commissioner Chaudhry Liaquat said.
The trans-Kashmir bus is the most dramatic gesture yet in the 14-month-old peace process between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, coming after months of stalled negotiations.
Kashmiris on both sides of the border celebrated after Islamabad and New Delhi agreed last month to start up the service, halted in 1947 after the first of the countries’ two wars over the territory. Work on the road leading to Srinagar and on a bus terminal in Muzaffarabad was in full swing and would be completed before April 7, Liaquat said. The bus fare was yet to be decided, he added.