Pak, India open second crossing point along LoC

KAMAN POST (Uri)—Pakistan and India reopened the main border crossing in divided Kashmir on Wednesday to help survivors of October’s devastating earthquake, but the frontier stayed closed to vital relief trucks and people.
The crossing between the Pakistani town of Chakothi and the Indian town of Uri was one of five points along the Line of Control the South Asian rivals agreed last month to open to facilitate aid and allow divided families to meet.
Another in southern Kashmir opened on Monday but bureaucracy has meant that so far no Kashmiris have been allowed over — only small and almost identical batches of aid carried by foot.
The United Nations wants to see the ceasefire line opened to aid trucks it says could save thousands of lives in remote mountain communities on the Pakistani side, but the two sides have yet to agree to this.
Army and civil officials shook hands and posed for photos at the earthquake-damaged Friendship Bridge on Wednesday before Pakistan sent over blankets, foodstuffs, tents and medicines and porters brought similar supplies from the Indian side.
“The concept is to restore confidence,” said Pakistani commander Lieutenant-Colonel Mohammad Chiragh Haider. “It is a step toward the right direction. It is very necessary”.
Friendship Bridge was opened in April as the first crossing between the two sides of Kashmir in over half a century when a bus service was launched from Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, to Srinagar, the biggest city in Indian Kashmir.
The service, which took small numbers of Kashmiris across the Line of Control every two weeks, has been suspended since the bridge and roads were badly damaged by the October 8 quake. A temporary footbridge was used for the supplies on Wednesday.
All five crossing points were supposed to open on Monday, but India says not all are ready.
Pakistan says India has insisted on paperwork, including name lists and security checks, which takes about 10 days to process, delaying family reunions until next week at the earliest.
On Monday, when the first point opened, Pakistani police fired teargas to disperse Kashmiris prevented from crossing.
The earthquake was the strongest to hit South Asia in 100 years and killed at least 73,276 people in Pakistan and more than 1,300 in Indian Kashmir, according to official tolls.
However, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri told reporters on Wednesday that latest estimates were of 86,000 deaths and over 100,000 injuries.
The United Nations, heading a big relief effort after the earthquake, says the Kashmir crossings should be opened rapidly.
On Tuesday, its World Food Programme said that with a bitter Himalayan winter closing in, there was a desperate need for wider access to hundreds of thousands of homeless survivors and a land route for aid from India would save thousands of lives.
WFP spokesman Robin Lodge said the U.N. was hoping for an agreement on truck crossings soon.
“It will make a huge difference if we can just truck stuff straight in from the Indian side rather than having to rely on fresh transport on the Pakistani side, which is in very limited supply, and offloading and onloading at the border”.
Pakistan and India exchanged artillery fire along the Line of Control until they agreed to a ceasefire in late 2003. The truce has underpinned a peace process that has included talks on Kashmir, but both sides remain nervous about too much contact.
Pakistan does not want the Indian military to see its defences, while India worries militants fighting its rule in Kashmir might slip in.
An Indian doctor helping the relief effort spotted his cousin on the other side of the bridge but could no meet him.
“I could not hug him or talk to him,” Sajad Shafi told Reuters. “They stopped us. So near yet so far ... We want these lines to be withdrawn so that we can meet our relatives”.
Meanwhile, aid officials warn that with winter approaching, time is running out on the worst hit Pakistani side and thousands of survivors without shelter could die.
Funds are also running short while acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea, dysentery and tetanus, are spreading.
A spokeswoman for the World Health Organization said 55 cases of life-threatening acute watery diarrhoea, which could have been caused by cholera, had been diagnosed at one of many tent refugee camps in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
Rachel Lavy said there could be up to 100 cases in the town and they were being investigated to see if cholera was the cause.
The United Nations says it has received funds and solid commitments worth only 15 percent of the total $550 million it appealed for. It has asked donors for $42.4 million for relief operations to the end of this month.—Agencies