Third Pak, India bus trial tomorrow

NEW DELHI—Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan will launch trial runs of a new bus service to connect their Punjab provinces from Sunday, the Indian government announced.
The latest move to increase people-to people ties as part of a slow moving peace process will link the Indian Sikh holy city of Amritsar with Lahore in Pakistan.
“The trial run of the Amritsar-Lahore bus service will take place on 11 December 2005 by the Indian operator and 13 December 2005 by the Pakistani operator,” the foreign ministry said in a statement late Thursday.
“This trial run had earlier been scheduled for October 2005 but was postponed due to the (October 8 South Asian) earthquake,” it said.
The quake claimed some 75,000 lives in Pakistan and Kashmir, the Himalayan region that is divided between the two neighbours and remains the main stumbling block in the peace process.
The Lahore-Amritsar bus, covering a 45 kilometre (28 mile) route, will link the two countries via their only international land crossing, at Wagah in the state of Punjab, a town that was split at partition in 1947.
The two countries launched their first bus link — between the Indian capital New Delhi and Lahore — in 1999.
The service resumed in July 2003 after being suspended following an Islamic militant attack on India’s parliament complex by suspected Pakistan-backed militants in December 2001.
The second bus link opened in April of this year, connecting the capitals of the Indian and Pakistani-held sectors of Kashmir.
The launch of a fourth bus aiming to connect Amritsar with Nankana Sahib, a Sikh pilgrimage centre in Pakistan, “will take place on 20-21 December 2005 in Islamabad,” the statement said.—Agencies