Time running out for LoC opening: Farooq
Staff Report

ISLAMABAD—The chances are dimming that India and Pakistan will reopen their disputed Kashmir border after nearly six decades in the wake of the earthquake tragedy, Pakistan’s disaster relief chief said. “My concern is that time is running out. If there are long parlays on the modalities then the window is closing,” Major General Farooq Ahmad Khan told reporters when asked about the proposal. President Pervez Musharraf offered Tuesday to throw open the Line of Control, which has split the Himalayan territory since 1949, to let families help one another after the quake. India welcomed the proposal but said it was awaiting details. Indian officials later said Pakistan had not made any concrete proposal.
Pressed on whether Pakistan had submitted a proposal to India, Khan signalled that Musharraf’s remarks to the media were enough. “Let me put the question in the correct perspective,” Khan said. “Should the time be wasted ... or should you wait forever that the proposal in writing would come”? “At this time, on the Line of Control, the divided families need to join together. That’s the bottom line,” he said. India has sent Pakistan three shipments of aid since the October 8 earthquake but their rivalry has repeatedly stymied cooperation to aid the desperate survivors in Kashmir, which has brought them to war twice.
The two countries failed to agree on a proposal for India to send badly needed helicopters after Pakistan said it would only accept the choppers without their Indian pilots. India has in the past been skeptical of Pakistani calls to open the border in Kashmir, fearing that Islamic militants opposed to New Delhi’s rule would take advantage of an open frontier. The earthquake killed more than 51,300 people in Pakistan including its zone of Kashmir, Khan said. More than 1,300 people died in the two-thirds of Kashmir administered by India, according to Indian police.
Agencies add: Federal Relief Commissioner, Major General Farooq Ahmed Khan Friday said no Kashmiris from across the Line of Control (LoC) had been allowed to share sorrows and assist their relatives living in Azad Kashmir, despite a proposal Pakistan had made a few days ago. “As a Relief Commissioner, I am more concerned if families could join their relatives to share sorrows and assist them here”, he told a questioner at a daily briefing on relief efforts.
President General Pervez Musharraf had announced on October 18 to allow Kashmiris from the LoC to come in Azad Kashmir and extend help to quake-hit people. The Relief Commissioner said despite passage of three days, not a single family had been allowed by the Indian government.
He said divided families living on both sides of the LoC need to meet together in this hour of need to console each other. Replying to a question that India had already welcomed President Musharraf’s proposal, he said, welcoming was one aspect while taking practical steps was another. Alluding to the need of taking action quickly, he said, if long parleys were held on modalities, then window was closing and the time was running out.