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'A shocking, crude attempt'

Nirupama Subramanian

Asma Jehangir incident leaves a bad taste

ISLAMABAD: Call the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation in Lahore and ask the booking clerk for a seat on the Lahore-Delhi bus.

"Twenty days' waiting time," says the booking clerk. The first available seat is on August 25.

The four times-a-week bus service is running packed. The surcharged atmosphere after the Mumbai blasts and the subsequent postponement of talks between the two countries do not seem to have affected the enthusiasm of people wanting to travel to India.

But the unsavoury incident of policemen barging into the New Delhi hotel rooms of Asma Jehangir and I.A. Rehman, both eminent Pakistanis and human rights activists, has left a bad taste in the mouth for those in Pakistan who believe that people-to-people contact is a good way to improve relations.

Peace activists expressed surprise that after pushing this confidence-building measure, India was mistreating visitors who were friends of the peace process.

"It is a shocking, unacceptable and crude attempt to disrupt the peace process," said M. Ziauddin, resident editor of the Dawn newspaper in Islamabad and president of the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA).

He said the apology by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh showed that parts of the Indian establishment were acting on their own without instructions from the top, "which is even more worrying."

Imtiaz Alam, secretary-general of SAFMA, who is to take a peace march across the Wagah border on August 14, said that if those behind the Asma Jehangir episode wanted to discourage peace activists, they would be disappointed.

"We are more determined to go on with our efforts. Such incidents enhance our determination to put the peace process back on rails," he said.

Individual visitors also remain undeterred. The PTDC booking clerk said the waiting time for the Lahore-Delhi bus was more than 30 days a few weeks ago, but had improved as the school holidays were ending.

The 12-hour bus journey from Lahore to Delhi costs Pak Rs. 1,500 (approx. Rs. 1,000), about one-tenth the cost of the airfare. But even plane seats are not easy.

"Please give me a week's notice when you want to travel so I can get you a seat," said a travel agent here.

The Indian High Commission's visa section is still snowed under 400 to 500 applications daily. Indian officials here said they were issuing the same number of visas as before the blasts. The monthly average number of visas issued is 10,000.

Most applicants have family links in India. Some go as tourists. A Pakistani family that was in New Delhi at the time of the Mumbai blasts said their immediate reaction was to return at once but they stayed on to complete their holiday that included trips to Agra, Shimla and Amritsar. Now they want to go back in January for a holiday in Goa.

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