Indian trucks bring tomatoes to Pakistan after 60 years

PAKISTAN: Trucks carrying tomatoes crossed the frontier between India and Pakistan on Monday, the first goods vehicles to do so since the rivals split 60 years ago, officials said.

The nuclear-armed neighbours agreed in August to allow each others’ trucks over their only land border as part of a slow-moving peace process launched in 2004.

Porters on foot previously took fruit, vegetables and other items across the heavily militarised Wagah border, a decades-long tradition that now appears threatened. “Indian trucks entered our side of the border for the first time and brought around 1,200 crates of tomatoes which we unloaded here,” a Pakistani Customs official told AFP.

The new procedure, adopted after demands by Indian and Pakistani traders, has “opened a new chapter of trade,” said Nasir Butt, an importer from the nearby city of Lahore.

But the porters have previously complained that they will lose their traditional livelihood. Mainly Muslim Pakistan and majority Hindu India have fought three major wars since independence from Britain and the subsequent partition in 1947 and came close to another conflict in 2002.

They have launched a series of “confidence-building measures” aimed at improving relations since they began peace moves.

Among them was a bus service between their respective sides of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir launched in 2005..

Lahore, Tuesday, AFP.