Karachi: A three-member Pakistani delegation on Saturday walked into India through the Wagah border to discuss water issues under the Indus Water Treaty with their Indian counterparts in Delhi, sources said.
The delegation will hold talks for five days during its stay in the country.
Sources said that Mirza Asif Baig, the Indus Water Commissioner, is leading the Pakistani delegation. The Pakistani team will discuss at length the designs of four proposed dams India is building at the River Chenab.
Talking to the media at the border, Baig said that he was hopeful that India would show flexibility on the redesigning of the dams. He further said that the Pakistani team would review the four proposed dams’ designs and would subsequently discuss a possible restructuring.
The Pakistani official further said that bilateral dialogues between the two countries were going on intermittently over the water disputes. However, Baig said that if the matters were not resolved then Pakistan had the right to approach international arbitration over the water issues.
Pakistan has witnessed devastating floods in the eastern Punjab province where overflowing rivers, beside torrential rains, has taken hundreds of lives and wiped out thousands of homes.
The floods that have continued for a couple of weeks has affected more than one million acres of standing rice crops in the province, whereas 1.8 million Pakistani farmers have been affected. More than 350 people have died.
Some religious groups and activists blamed India for releasing water from its Baghliar dam into River Chenab causing the destruction of Pakistani plains.
However, Baig, who co-chairs the Indus Water Commission under the Indus Water Treaty between the two countries, ruled out the claim that the flood was the result of a release of water into the River Chenab by India. He further clarified that the heavy rains into the Chenab basin caused the heavy flooding into the river.
