Pakistan has decided to send an official delegation to New Delhi next week to work out modalities for resumption of the Delhi-Lahore bus service, but maintained a studious silence on resumption of air and rail links between two countries.
The delegation would comprise senior officials of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, a representative of the Foreign Office and technical staff of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC), Islamabad daily Dawn quoted officials as saying.
Following the decision to resume services on July one, the Delhi Transport Corporation sent a fax message to Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC), inviting a technical committee to finalise modalities to resume the bus service within a week.
The PTDC's three-member technical committee will discuss with its Indian counterparts the number of trips, fare, number of buses to be plied and timings of the services.
The were also expected to discuss dues reportedly owed by PTDC to DTC.
An inter-ministerial meeting convened by the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi on June 3 decided that the bus service, stopped following the terrorist strike on Parliament on December 13, 2001, could be started from July one if Pakistan agreed to the schedule.
Though resumption of air links was the first measure announced by both the prime ministers, Pakistan so far maintained that the issue should be sorted out between civil aviation officials of both countries.
Pakistan appeared not to be in a hurry on the air links front as officials there claim Air-India had to suffer heavy losses owing to re-routing of over 100 flights to Europe whereas only a dozen-odd Pakistani flights were affected.
On the rail front too, officials in Islamabad said they were ready to operate the train service but Pakistan appeared to be cautious on resumption of freight services the two countries as the issue of normalisation of trade relations with India yet to be finalised.