The Indian Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, will travel to Pakistan later this week on the inaugural run of a cross-border bus service. This is one of several initiatives to reduce tension between the two nuclear-capable neighbours who have fought three wars since independence in 1947.
Although details of Mr Vajpayee's bus journey on February 20th have yet to be finalised, he is expected to board the Delhi-Lahore bus near the border town of Amritsar to make the short run to the Pakistani border city 25 miles away. According to reports from Islamabad, the Pakistani prime minister, Mr Nawaz Sharif, will meet the bus after it crosses the border post at Wagah.
Mr Vajpayee told reporters at the G15 summit in Jamaica yesterday that he would be willing to discuss the sensitive issue of Kashmir in talks with Mr Sharif while he is in Lahore.
He announced his intention to travel by bus to Pakistan last week after Mr Sharif, in an interview to an Indian newspaper, invited him to make the historic land journey to improve relations after five "wasteful" decades of antagonism. Mr Sharif said the official dialogue being conducted under international pressure was getting nowhere and bilateral talks should now involve top politicians.
Mr Vajpayee is taking the trip despite fundamentalist Hindu parties, that are his political allies, threatening to disrupt the reciprocal bus service, the first since independence 52 years ago. Responding to taunts that he should take a tank to Pakistan rather than a bus, Mr Vajpayee replied: "They already have tanks there."
A thaw in relations between the two countries came about after both worked hard to ensure the success of the recently concluded Pakistani cricket tour of India despite threats from Hindu extremists. Before that, relations had deteriorated when the two sides conducted nuclear tests last May and declared their intent to build weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles aimed at each other's cities.
A team of 25 Indian MPs is to make a goodwill tour to Pakistan later this week and negotiations to buy electricity from Islamabad are reported to be at an advanced stage. It is hoped this will enhance prospects of cross-border trade. Many Hindu extremist political parties and groups oppose any move to normalise relations with Pakistan, holding it responsible for arming and training Kashmiri separatists in their decade-long fight for an Islamic homeland in which nearly 20,000 people have died.
Pakistan , which occupies a third of Kashmir - India's only Muslim-majority province - and lays claim to the rest, denies the allegation.
Extremist Muslim groups in Pakistan have warned Mr Sharif against starting the bus service, believing that improving relations with India amount to "betraying" Kashmiri militants. The second round of official talks between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, security and nuclear issues is due to take place later this month in New Delhi and conclude before Mr Vajpayee's bus trip to Lahore. The first, inconclusive round was held in Islamabad last October and diplomats said little progress was expected during the follow-up talks.
India which conducted five nuclear tests in May has declared a no-first use of nuclear weapons.
The UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, will attend a rights protection workshop and meet senior Indian leaders during a three-day visit to Delhi beginning today, UN officials said.
Mrs Robinson will take part in the seventh Asia-Pacific workshop on regional protection for the promotion and protection of human rights during the trip. She will meet Mr Vajpayee on Thursday and representatives of the Delhi-based National Human Rights Commission, Indian officials said.
She will also address the Global Conference on Democracy, a new association of democracy activists, to speak on human rights and women at a meeting organised by the International Association of Women in Radio and Television.