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Pak. wants bus service to be a low-key affair?

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD JULY 9. Pakistan has decided to keep the ceremony to mark the resumption of the Lahore-New Delhi bus service a low-key affair, perhaps a reflection of its assessment of the Vajpayee peace initiative.

The Minister for Culture and Tourism, Raees Munir Ahmed, and not the Prime Minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, would be flagging off the first run at Lahore.

The bus would be flagged off at 6 a.m. IST from Lahore. About the same time the bus from New Delhi would start for Pakistan. It takes 11 hours to cover the distance of 500 kilometres as immigration and customs clearance is expected to take a couple of hours.

Last fortnight, Mr. Munir Ahmed had announced at a news conference here that he had written to Mr. Jamali requesting him to flag off the bus. The Minister went to the extent of saying that one of the factors, which would determine the date of re-commencement of the service, was the convenience of the Prime Minister.

It is believed that Pakistan was serious about the proposal. However, when it learnt that from the Indian side the bus would be seen off by the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, Islamabad dropped the idea. When the question was raised with the Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman, Masood Khan, he merely said the Tourism Minister would flag off the bus. He would not say whether Mr. Jamali was "reluctant" to do the honours because the peace process was not proceeding at the pace it had expected.

The bus service would be resuming exactly after a gap of 18 months and 10 days.

A large contingent of Pakistani and international media personnel have applied for visas with the Indian High Commission to take a ride. It would be the largest media group from Pakistan visiting India after the July 2001 Agra summit.

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