India, Pakistan to reopen second rail link Feb. 18
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A rail service linking Pakistan and India will resume later this month after a more than four-decade gap, the latest indication that hostilities between the nuclear-armed rivals are waning.
India and Pakistan agreed Tuesday to start running the "Thar Express" from Feb. 18, re-establishing a second rail link between the countries.
Pakistan will operate the return service every Saturday for the first six months of the year, then Indian for the next six months. It will run from Mirpurkhas in southern Pakistan, passing through the border town of Khokhrapar and on to Munabao in India's western state of Gujarat.
The leaders of Pakistan and India agreed to reopen the rail link - which was severed during a 1965 war between the South Asian rivals - during a summit in New Delhi in April 2005. Since then officials from the two sides have met several times to iron out the details.
A rail link between Lahore and New Delhi resumed in 2004, weeks after the two nations began their peace process aimed at burying six decades of enmity.