The Hindu : Resumption of air links a tough issue

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 20, 2003

International

International - India & World

Resumption of air links a tough issue

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD JUNE 19. With the formal agreement on resumption of the Delhi-Lahore-Delhi bus service, the focus would now shift to reopening of the air links between India and Pakistan. However, unlike the bus service, resumption of the snapped air links could prove to be a tedious affair.

After all, it is over seven weeks since both sides have expressed their desire for revival of air links and yet the proposal has not moved forward. At the heart of the controversy on air links is the question of allowing overflight facilities on a reciprocal basis.

Pakistan has been elusive on the clarification sought by New Delhi whether restoration of air links would imply overflight facilities. The refrain from senior functionaries in the Pakistan Government is that it is a matter to be decided between the civilian experts on both sides.

Implied in it is the suggestion for a request from India for a formal meeting of the civil aviation experts as had happened in the case of the bus service. Pakistan expects India to send a team of experts to Islamabad to sort out issues related to the restoration of air links.

Pakistan has deliberately adopted the stance to register its unhappiness over New Delhi's decision to suspend overflight facilities from January 1, 2002 along with the snapping of air links. Secondly, in the perception of Islamabad, while it is the right of any country to suspend air links, allowing overflight facilities falls in a separate category.

``It is for the third time since the 1971 war that India has unilaterally suspended the overflight facility. We believe that the issue of suspension of air links and overflight facility should be linked. This is the reason why Pakistan did not respond positively in June last year when India proposed restoration of overflight facilities," a senior official in the Pakistan Foreign Office said.

However, a senior diplomat in the Indian High Commission contested the claim. He maintained that Islamabad had moved the International Court of Justice on the subject after the suspension of overflight facilities in the 1970s and lost the case. "Suspension of overflight facilities is very much the sovereign right of a country," he asserted.

Haggling over the issue is expected to continue in the coming days though there is optimism that air links would be restored in the near future. The Director-General of Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority, Saleem Arshad, told correspondents here that "there is no specific effort at the moment to open airspace and it depends how the thaw in relations between the two countries evolve''.

He conceded that Pakistan's civil aviation suffered losses due to a ban of Pakistan plans using India airspace. India, too, suffered heavy losses as it had more flights using Pakistani airspace.

``Allowing airspace will be a political decision of the governments,'' Mr. Arshad said.

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