Monday, February 14 2005 16:11 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Islamabad: Amid hopes of progress in breaking the deadlock over the modalities to run a Srinagar-Muzafarabad bus service and trans-national gas pipelines, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh arrives in Islamabad tomorrow (Feb 15, 2005) with a heavily loaded agenda that includes ironing out differences over Ahemedabad as venue for the forthcoming Pakistan cricket tour.

Ahead of Singh's three-day visit, Indian and Pakistani officials are hopeful that both countries could resolve differences over travel documents for passengers in the bus service connecting both sides of LoC. New Delhi reportedly toyed with the idea of permitting the travel with local "rahdari" permit system prevalent till 1953 on both sides of Kashmir.

Pakistan opposes passport and visa as travel documents as it believed that it would jeopardise its stand on Kashmir as a "disputed" territory. It was perceived on both sides that early resumption of the bus service could give a major push to the Composite Dialogue process which was bogged down in the second round with little progress.

Earlier, India dropped visa as a document for travel but wanted the passport as an identification document along with permit. But it appears that New Delhi is willing to consider Pakistan's objections and look for more "innovative" solutions to iron out differences.

Officials in Islamabad do not rule out an agreement between the two sides during Singh's visit.

Yet another positive development ahead of Singh's visit was India's decision to authorise its Petroleum Ministry to negotiate Iran-India and Turkmenistan gas pipelines, de-linking from its earlier stand that the pipeline projects which pass through Pakistan should be part of overall opening up of economic and trade relations between the two countries.

While there is no word yet here on how Pakistan proposes to deal with reported reservations by the United States over the Iran gas pipeline, as Washington was involved in a serious row with Tehran over nuclear weapons issues, India's decision broadly complies with Pakistan stand that the pipelines are a stand-alone project not linked to other issues.

According to the officials in Islamabad, on the India-Iran project, India has decided to leave the operational aspects of the pipeline to Tehran and Islamabad and work out a fixed delivery price with Tehran bearing the overall responsibility to deliver the gas at India's door step.

Singh was expected to elaborate on Indian stand to Pakistan leaders on this issue and his visit was expected to be followed by Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Ayer in the coming weeks.

Officials also said that in their talks with Singh, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his counterpart Khurshid M Kasuri were expected to engage him on a host of other issues including the progress on the eight point composite dialogue process, fixing new dates for SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit.

The issue over Ahemedabad as venue for cricket matches for the Pakistan cricket team tour to India beginning from Feb 25 is also expected to come up.