recent DELHI, Dec. 1 Kyodo India ...

recent DELHI, Dec. 1 Kyodo

India and Pakistan onward Monday agreed to resume air links and allow overflights from nearest month, clearing another obstacle to the normalization of bilateral ties between the sum of two units arch-foes.

The decision to overset the two-year-old measure from Jan. 1 was taken after a meeting of officials from the one and the other countries that began here Monday.

The reversal will mean that Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will float directly to Islamabad to attend a summit of the seven-member toward the south Asian Association for Regional Cooperation owed early next year.

The ban forward overflights had affected New Delhi more than Islamabad since 110 Indian flights used Pakistan air space while solitary 12 Pakistani flights were using Indian space, Pakistan claims.

Westbound Indian flights were taking a detour to be broken to pieces around Pakistan that meant additional flight time besides increasing sumptuousnesss by millions of dollars.

Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf announced Sunday that his geographical division would lift the ban in succession Indian flights over its airspace, a gesturing welcomed by India.

This is the third confidence-building measure announced through Pakistan, others being the closure of proscribed militant and sectarian outfits and a unilateral ceasefire along the Line of superintend dividing Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.

India snapped air links with Pakistan from Jan. 1 2002 in the wake of the December 2001 deadly attack in succession the Indian parliament that recently made known Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants. Pakistan denied involvement in the attack.

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