Pakistan allows delivery of India aid to Afghanistan
India had said on Thursday it is engaged in discussions with Pakistan to work out modalities for supplying the life-saving medicines and wheat to Afghanistan and insisted that no conditions should be attached to the shipping of the relief materials.
Pakistan said on Friday it will allow 50,000 tonnes of wheat and medicines to be shipped from India to Afghanistan via the Wagah land border crossing in Afghan trucks, ending an impasse over the transportation of the humanitarian aid.
India had said on Thursday it is engaged in discussions with Pakistan to work out modalities for supplying the life-saving medicines and wheat to Afghanistan and insisted that no conditions should be attached to the shipping of the relief materials.
The Pakistan government’s decision was conveyed to the charge d’affaires of the Indian high commission at the Foreign Office in Islamabad. “The Indian government was also urged to proceed quickly to take necessary steps to expeditiously undertake the delivery of the humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan,” said a statement from Pakistan’s foreign ministry.
There was no word on the development from the Indian side.
The Pakistani statement said the government had decided to “allow the use of Afghan trucks for transportation from Wagah border to Torkham”, a key border crossing between Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.
The statement reiterated the Pakistani side’s position that it would allow the transportation of the wheat and medicines from India via the Wagah border crossing on an “exceptional basis for humanitarian purposes”. The statement added that Friday’s decision reflected the Pakistan government’s commitment and seriousness to facilitate the proposed humanitarian aid.
Pakistan had earlier linked its decision to allow the transportation of the relief materials to the condition that the goods be moved only by Pakistani trucks. India made the proposal for shipping the wheat and medicines to the Afghan people via Pakistani soil on October 7, and received a response from the Pakistan government only on November 24.
“Since then, we have had discussions with Pakistan on the modalities of this supply...Let me reiterate our belief that humanitarian assistance should not be subject to conditionalities,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said on Thursday.
The Indian side was keen on using its own trucks or Afghan vehicles in order to ensure that the relief materials directly reached the Afghan people without being diverted. The Indian side also envisages the aid will be distributed only through the UN and its agencies.