India, Pakistan to hold DG-level talks

Despite political tensions between the two neighbours over the Kashmir issue, the border-guarding forces of India and Pakistan will hold their bi-annual DG-level talks on issues related to ceasefire violations, infiltration and digging of illegal tunnels along the international border this week in Lahore.

According to sources, the meeting will take place on July 27-28 and senior officials from Delhi, led by BSF director-general K.K. Sharma, will leave for Pakistan on Monday. The other members of the 22-member Indian delegation will cross over from the Attari-Wagah land border at Amritsar. The last such meeting between the Border Security Force and the Pakistan Rangers was held here in September 2015.

Sources said the border has been “relatively less volatile” in nearly nine months since the last meeting between the two forces compared to the frequent ceasefire violations in Jammu and Kashmir in early 2015. However, infiltration and drug-smuggling continued to be a matter of concern. They said the bi-annual meeting between the two border-guarding forces has been delayed due to a number of bilateral issues.

The Indian side, during their talks at the Rangers headquarters in Lahore, is also expected to raise issues related to the smuggling of arms, contraband items and detection of illegal tunnels running across the international border, sources said. The last time, the two sides had met in Delhi and decided not to fire heavy artillery and ensure that civilians living along the border were not harmed. The two forces had also decided that their officials, right up to the level of directors-general, will exchange mobile numbers, email ids and fax numbers for swift communication to resolve disputes on the international border running through the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat. The DG-level talks are a bi-annual affair, but have been cancelled many times.