Author: Omer Farooq Khan
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 1, 2010
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indian-supplies-to-Kabul-despite-ban-anger-Pak/articleshow/5523622.cms
Pakistan is miffed that Indian goods, including
heavy machinery, trucks and buses, are finding their way into Afghanistan
through Pakistani soil despite Islamabad's no transit rule for any India-Afghan
trade barring that in dry fruits.
Opposition lawmakers are protesting that in
a bid to please Washington and allow free access to goods marked for Nato
and ISAF forces in Afghanistan, government is quietly allowing the India-Afghan
trade to bloom along the Pakistan route.
Islamabad has refused transit rights to Indian
products under the bilateral Afghan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA). But Dawn
reported that a information sheet of NATO cargoes transported to Afghanistan
through Pakistan included a 66-seater Tata bus and scores of other Indian
products as "provisions for ISAF and Nato'. The report said Indian goods
have been regularly transported to Afghanistan via Pakistan under Nato and
ISAF tags since the fall of Kabul to the US forces in 2001.
Islamabad offered its ports and duty free transit to Nato and ISAF as part
of its arrangement with the US following the 2001 Afghan war. Under the arrangement,
Pakistani customs officials can't seek details of the imported items and have
to accept the information provided by the Nato countries.
Despite the US pressure, Pakistan has made
clear that it won't allow transit facilities for Indian goods to Afghanistan
amid fears that New Delhi's vast aid programme, close ties with Kabul and
expanded diplomatic presence was part of a policy of strategic encirclement.
