Intra-Kashmir trade remains suspended

ISLAMABAD: As all intra-Kashmir trade and bus travel remained suspended for the fourth consecutive day, Pakistan and India have taken up the issue through diplomatic channels, as traders are worried that fresh fruit would rot if not delivered on time.
Director General South Asia at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mohammad Nafees Zakaria, took up the issue with the Indian Deputy High Commissioner, JP Singh, and a demand was made for the release of driver, return of trucks and an early resolution of the issue.
After a similar incident last year, Indian and Pakistani diplomats met in New Delhi which both sides described as an ‘excellent meeting’ and steps were discussed as how to tackle such matters when the CBMs themselves were silent on them.
“In future, other issues could also arise which are not included in the agreement and we discussed ways and means to tackle them,” a diplomat attending the Delhi meeting had told The News.
However, on Monday, Pakistan blamed India for not adhering to the ‘spirit’ of the 2008 agreement on the Line of Control (LoC), which through Confidence Building Measures (CBM) also facilitates the intra-Kashmir trade and travel.
In a repeat of what happened last year, a truck crossing into the Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) was stopped and the driver charged with carrying contraband items. Twenty-two trucks have also been stopped from returning to Azad Kashmir.
Consequently, 49 vehicles from the IHK carrying fruit, which were on their way to Rawalpindi, have been now stopped in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, as a reaction, and traders say that only after the release of their driver and his truck by the Indian authorities will they allow these 49 vehicles to move.
Confusion prevailed when some traders maintained that there had been an agreement last year between the two sides that if a case of contraband occurred, then the driver and truck would be returned and authorities would start legal proceedings.
When the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs was approached, the spokesperson said that both the governments were in touch on the matter but did not agree that the Confidence Building Measures arrived at in 2008 had specifically mentioned that in such a case the driver and truck would be returned.
However, she blamed India for not adhering to the spirit behind the agreement.“Yes, we are in contact. While it is not specifically mentioned in the modalities, the spirit behind the formulation of CBMs in 2006 was to exercise due care to leave aside jurisprudence and jurisdictional issues. This was in view of disputed nature of the territory on both sides of the Line of Control. India did not follow the spirit,” she explained to The News.
On Sunday in an interview with AFP, Basharat Iqbal, trade facilitation officer on the Pakistani side of the border, said: “We were informed by the Indian authorities on Friday evening that they have stopped 22 Pakistani trucks which crossed the Line of Control (LOC) earlier that day.”
“They told us that they had discovered 12 kilograms (26 pounds) of opium from a truck carrying oranges and were taking action against the driver. After the incident, we also held 50 Indian trucks on Pakistani Kashmir side, because traffic crosses the border simultaneously,” said Iqbal.
Earlier, also when the Indian Border Security Force resorted to unprovoked firing at the LoC, the issue of ‘spirit’ of the 2003 agreement was raised.Pakistan had asked India “to uphold the ceasefire over the LoC and reiterate its commitment to the Ceasefire Agreement of 2003, which should be respected in letter and spirit”.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated report, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Jalil Abbas Jillani told The Washington Times that this past year Indian leaders showed a “kind of arrogance not to engage,” and New Delhi had failed to respond to Pakistan’s efforts to create a joint counter-terrorism initiative between the neighbouring countries.