Bus service resumes between India/Pakistan

Dozens of rain-soaked Indian passengers jostled onto a luxury bus today that honked wildly as it headed for Pakistan, resuming a transportation link disrupted 18 months ago by threats of war between the hostile, nuclear-armed neighbours.

Another bus left an hour later in the opposite direction from the Pakistani city of Lahore for New Delhi.

“I have a feeling that this time it will continue, the bus will run,” said Laiq Ahmed, 45, an Indian Muslim travelling with family members from New Delhi to his Indian niece’s wedding in Pakistan.

The marriage was delayed when India and Pakistan severed ground and air transportation, withdrew their ambassadors and deployed nearly a million troops on their border last year.

“We were so heartbroken,” said Mohammed’s wife, Sajda Begum. “We just hope that friendship continues between the two countries.”

The preparations for the fourth war between them in 56 years since independence followed a December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan’s spy agency and Islamic militants harbouring in the neighbouring country. Pakistan denied involvement.

International diplomacy helped bring the two countries back from the brink of conflict, and they are now taking steps to restore ties.

“We are looking forward to a peaceful solution to all the problems. We hope the goodwill gesture will be appreciated and Pakistan will end cross-border terrorism,” said federal Transport Minister Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri, who flagged off the bus.

The chocolate coloured bus leaving the Indian capital, called “Sada-e-Sarhad” or “Call of the Border”, had the flags of the two countries painted on it, and the words: ”A bridge between two nations”.

Millions of Indian Muslims have relatives across the border in Pakistan, the Islamic nation carved out of the Indian mainland by British colonialists in 1947, when they left the subcontinent. The bus service is one of the few transport links between the two countries.

Body and luggage searches awaited the passengers at the border, and in India, 1,000 police were put on alert along the 280-mile road between New Delhi and the border checkpoint, while two vans of policemen escorted the bus, said Satish Sharma, inspector-general of the Border Security Force in Punjab.

He said police were on the lookout for attacks by Islamic militants who have sometimes waged assaults when steps are made toward peace.