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Working boundary tensions to be reduced

By Our Staff Reporter 2013-12-26
LAHORE: The bi-annual meeting between senior officials of Pakistan Rangers (Punjab) and India`s Border Security Force continued for a second day at the Rangers Headquarters here on Wednesday.

Sources told Dawn that both sides, which met after one and a half years, agreed to resolve theissues of unprovoked firing by the BSF on the working boundary, airspace violation by Indian helicopters and spy planes, prevention of inadvertent border-crossing and killing of innocent citizens.

They said Pakistan Rangers (Punjab) director general Major General Khan Tahir Javed Khan took up with BSF director general Subhash Joshi the most crucial matter of a series of indiscriminatefiring and shelling by Indian forces on Pakistani areas in the past 18 months.

The two sides agreed that such shellings should be stopped, the sources added.

Five brigadiers, including the deputy director general, Rangers (Sindh), and three inspectors general of BSF attended the meeting.

The BSF delegation comprising 13 officers had arrived in Lahore viaWagah on Monday.

The sources said that other matters, including illegal defencerelated constructions on the border by BSF, illegal border-crossing and prevention of smuggling and release and return of Pakistani prisoners from Indian jails, would be raised in the coming days.

They said a joint communiqué would be issued on Dec 28, the last day of the bi-annual meeting.