Indo-Pak talks on Tulbal Navigation Project on Apr 24

New Delhi, Apr 22: India and Pakistan will hold their next round of talks on Tulbal (sic) Navigation Project/Wullar Barrage under the Composite Dialogue Process (CDP) in Islamabad on Tuesday and Wednesday, official sources said here today.

(While India calls it Tulbal Navigation Project, Pakistan describes it as Wullar Barrage).

The talks were earlier scheduled to be held on April 18-19, as per the schedule worked out for the Third Round of the Composite Dialogue Meetings between the two countries. However, these were postponed because of the Narmada agitation and hunger strike by the activists.

The sources said Water Secretary J Harinarayan, who will lead the Indian side at the talks, will leave here on Monday for Islamabad.

He will be accompanied by officials of the Indus Water Commission, legal and technical experts and officials from the Ministries of Power and External Affairs.

The Pakistani delegation at the two-day talks will be headed by Water and Power Secretary Ashfaq Mehmood.

The last round of the talks on the subject under the CDP was held here in June last year.

Both sides had reached an undestanding in 1994 based on which a non-paper was presented by the Indian side to Pakistan. Pakistan however, rejected the proposal.

While Pakistan says the project, on River Jhelum in Jammu and Kashmir, violates the Indus Water Treaty, India says suspension of work on the project is harming the peope of the state.

Work on the project was suspended in 1987 three years after construction started on it in 1984.

UNI