Days After Cancelled Talks, Indian, Pakistani Border Officers Meet

Indian and Pakistani border security officers began three-day talks in Delhi today

The Director Generals of the Border Security Force (BSF) and Pakistan Rangers will hold discussions over three days amid escalated firing across the border and infiltration attempts.

India also plans to raise the recent attacks in Udhampur and Gurdaspur by terrorists who had crossed over from Pakistan, and drug trafficking in Punjab and Rajasthan.

The Pakistani officers, led by Rangers Director General Umar Farooq Burki, were received at the Attari-Wagah land border near Amritsar by senior Indian officers and were later flown to Delhi in a special plane.

“The talks will also endeavour to focus on positive issues like different levels of communication, more simultaneous coordinated patrolling and other confidence-building measures,” said a BSF statement.

Pakistan will raise what it alleges is “unprovoked firing” by Indian forces on the Line of Control, said the countries National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz.

Last month, the first high-level peace talks in years between the two country’s National Security Advisers were cancelled after a dispute over the agenda for those talks.

India wanted to discuss terrorism-related issues and objected to Pakistan’s intentions of meeting separatists from Kashmir. Pakistan insisted that it would raise Kashmir.