India and Pakistan resolved to widen their peace dialogue yesterday as they discussed festering issues including their decades-old dispute over Kashmir.
India's Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and his Pakistani counterpart Riaz Khokhar reviewed progress made in previous talks, paving the way for fresh dialogue to begin today. In a joint statement after the talks in New Delhi, the pair said talks had been "productive ... Several useful ideas and suggestions were made by both sides."
PHOTO: AP
India's External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri were scheduled to meet in New Delhi today and tomorrow.
"The Foreign Secretaries discussed ways of taking the process forward," the statement said. "They would be reporting to the foreign ministers with the recommendation that the composite dialogue should be continued with a view to further deepening and broadening the engagement between the two sides."
At the heart of India-Pakistan tensions is Kashmir, where New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of arming Islamic militant groups who cross to the Indian side and carry out terrorist strikes.
The rebel groups have been fighting Indian security forces since 1989, seeking Muslim-majority Kashmir's independence from predominantly Hindu India or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan. More than 65,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
Islamabad denies New Delhi's charge that it helps the militant groups materially. Pakistan also says it is clamping down on rebels on its territory. But India says militants continue to cross from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
Sideshow
Meanwhile, as the diplomats met to push forward peace, their border guards play out a jingoistic ritual of confrontation for thousands of onlookers from both sides.
The display of hostility takes place every evening at a flag-lowering ceremony on both sides of the rivals' only border crossing.
Loudspeakers blare out patriotic Indian songs and soon the crowds at the Wagah border crossing begin to chant.
"Hail mother India!" is the cry from 8,000 Indians in a grandstand built beside the border gate, set amid green wheat fields.
"Long live Pakistan!" several thousand Pakistanis shout back from the other side of tall iron gates guarded by soldiers with assault rifles. "God is greatest."
The old rivals came close to a fourth war in 2002 but ties warmed last year, culminating in a summit between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Crowds at the daily ceremony have swelled in the past couple of years to nearly 10,000 on the Indian side from a few hundred before, Indian border guards said.
Groups of Indian school girls dance in the stands and in the middle of the road as the music switches to a 1960s patriotic Bollywood song set to a modern tune.
The chanting reaches a crescendo as border guards dressed in ceremonial uniforms with tufted headgear begin a goose-step march to lower flags at the gate, stomping their boots with enough force to kick up dust on the asphalted road.
"The line between tourism and nationalism does not exist here," said a senior Indian officer.
"Military tensions are down and the soldiers are relaxed but it doesn't matter to the public. They get very excited."
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
RSS