National

Pak. team 'overwhelmed' by reception

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI MAY 10. The demand for the visiting Parliamentary delegation from Pakistan among Delhi's academicia and the elite, desirous of listening to the views from across the border, reached such heights this afternoon that a group literally "hijacked" the delegates to an unscheduled meeting even as the organisers and participants at a scheduled one waited for them in vain.

Attending back-to-back meetings, the members though tired did not miss out on the opportunity of airing their thoughts on issues crucial to better India-Pakistan ties.

Arriving over two hours late at a felicitation function organised by the South Asian Fraternity, the delegates chose not to blame the organisers of another function for the delay but shouldered the "fault" saying they were overwhelmed by the public response. "This just shows that the feeling of brotherhood has not been mitigated by years of problems," said M.P. Bhandara, a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan.

He hoped that the friendship between the two countries would improve and easy travel become a reality. Of the view that the "seeds of hatred" had been sown not by the people but by the bureaucracy, he said it was time people stood up to bring down the artificial walls.

And as the secretary-general of the Fraternity, Satya Paul, read out a series of demands essential for improving the ties and people-to-people contact between the two countries, another Senator, Saleem Jan Mazari, raised the issue of again opening up the consulates in Mumbai and Karachi. His intervention on an issue — overlooked by the organisers — was widely applauded.

Mr. Mazari said that coming from Sindh, where a large number of families have relatives residing in India, he felt a strong need for initiating moves for reopening the consulates in Karachi and Mumbai as otherwise people were forced to travel all the way to Islamabad and New Delhi for crossing the border.

Later, at a public interaction session organised by Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy, Mr. Bhandara speaking on behalf of all the delegates said that while for Pakistan the core issue was Kashmir and for India it was cross-border terrorism, there was a need to promote trade relations as a means of opening new avenues of dialogue.

Mr. Bhandara said that just as India and China had compartmentalised their problems vis-à-vis territorial disputes and thus did not let them affect bilateral trade, so too efforts should be made to minimise and isolate areas of difference between India and Pakistan.

Mr. Mazari seconded the view saying India, Pakistan and Bangladesh together could form a formidable market for the economic uplift of the masses.

However, on the issue of Kashmir, the Pakistani parliamentarians held the firm view that converting the Line of Control into the International Border would not help.

"The public opinion is against it on both sides of the border and so we should instead be looking at other options like giving autonomy to Jammu and the Kashmir Valley so that we may have a Switzerland like situation,'' said Mr. Mazari.

One of the organisers of PIPFPD, Tapan Bose, too opposed the idea of making the LoC an IB saying the country had already been partitioned twice and so "would we like to partition Jammu and Kashmir as well"? "The Kashmiris are eagerly waiting for the two sides to come together."

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