Pakistan’s envoy to India to return back to New Delhi

By Islamuddin Sajid and Zahid Rafiq

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan/SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) - Pakistan on Tuesday announced that its envoy to India will return to New Delhi upon consultations in Islamabad after Pulwama attack, an official said.

"Pakistan's high commissioner to India will be returning to New Delhi after consultations are completed in Islamabad," Mohammad Faisal, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a statement.

The consultations aimed to de-escalate the ongoing tension between both nuclear neighbors, the official said.

Pakistan called back its High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood on Feb. 18 for consultations after a suicide attack on Indian forces in Pulwama area of India-administered Kashmir on Feb. 14.

Meanwhile, Gaurav Ahluwalia, the acting Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, was invited to the Foreign Affairs Ministry and informed about the Pakistan decisions.

A Pakistani delegation will also visit the Indian capital New Delhi on March 14, followed by the return of the Indian delegation to Islamabad on March 28, to discuss the draft agreement on Kartarpur Corridor, Faisal added.

He said Pakistan is committed to continue weekly contact at the level of military operations directorate.

In a rare gesture of understanding, Pakistan and India agreed to open a key border crossing this year ahead of the historic birthday of the founder of the Sikh religion.

The opening of the Kartarpur border, which connects Pakistan’s northeastern city of Narowal to India’s northern Gurdaspur district, will provide visa-free access to Indian Sikhs to visit their holy temple.

The Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara is one of the most revered sites for the Sikh community, as some 500 years ago, Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, spent the last decades of his life here.

- Barter trade resumes in disputed Kashmir

Relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors further soured when warplanes from both sides engaged in a dogfight along the border of disputed Kashmir. India and Pakistan claimed to have downed each other's planes and an Indian pilot was captured.

In a move to quell tensions, Pakistan handed over the captured pilot to Indian authorities last Friday.

After suspended for a week amid rising tensions, India and Pakistan on Tuesday resumed the cross-border barter trade along the Line of Control (LOC), a de facto border that divides disputed Kashmir valley between the two countries.

“The trade resumed today. There was no trade across the LOC last week,” Riyaz Malik, sub-divisional magistrate of Uri, told Anadolu Agency.

The barter trade along the LOC in Uri takes place from Tuesday to Friday every week with traders from two divided sides of Kashmir exchanging goods, from food items to fruits and clothes. No money is used in the trade.

Trade official in Uri said that thirty-five trucks left for Chakothi on the Pakistani side of the border and an equal number came toward Uri on Tuesday.

Trade was suspended after a spate cross border mortar fire between the two countries on the border.

The cross LOC trade was started in 2008 as a Confidence Building Measure (CBM) between the two countries but has over the years shown a marked lack of growth and often becomes hostage to the tensions between the two countries.

The two South Asian nations have fought three wars in 1948, 1965 and 1971 -- two of them over Kashmir, since they were partitioned in 1947.