India to reopen consulate in Karachi

KARACHI, Thursday (AFP) India will reopen its consulate in Pakistan's largest city Karachi by January 2006 after a gap of nearly 12 years, as part of an ongoing peace process, the Indian foreign minister said Wednesday.

Visiting Minister Natwar Singh told reporters in the volatile southern city that he had asked the consul to finish the renovation of India House by December 31.

"We will be giving visas from January and the Pakistani consulate in Mumbai will also be functioning by that time," added Singh, who was in Pakistan for peace talks and returned home Wednesday. The consulates in Karachi and the southern Indian city of Mumbai were shut in 1994 amid a series of disputes including claims by then Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto that the Indian secret service was abetting terrorism.

The South Asian rivals agreed in July 2004 to reopen both consulates, as part of a wider peace process launched earlier the same year and aimed at ending nearly six decades of hostilities.

The consulates in the two port cities will make travel easier for members of families split during the subcontinent's partition in 1947, who can currently only seek visas at embassies in New Delhi and Islamabad.

Singh said that the opening of the consulate would coincide with the re-opening of a rail link between southern Pakistan and Western India, which was cut off after the 1965 war between the two countries.

"We are looking forward to opening Khokrapar-Munabao railway link between Sindh and Western India," he said.

On Monday India and Pakistan signed deals to notify each other in advance of ballistic missile tests and to set up a hotline between their coastguards as Singh held talks with his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Kasuri.