New Delhi, July 5 (IANS) Indian and Pakistani border guards Thursday agreed to prevent and avoid cross-frontier firing and to maintain the ceasefire which was agreed upon in November 2003.
This was stated by the chiefs of India's Border Security Force (BSF) and Pakistan Rangers here after four days of talks that ended with the signing of a record of the discussions.
'Efforts will be made to ensure that...no such instance of firing along the border would takes place and if at all a ceasefire violation happens, such an instance will be nipped in the bud so that it does not aggravate,' BSF Director General U.K. Bansal told the reporters at a joint press conference with his Pakistan Rangers (Sindh) counterpart Rizwan Akhtar.
Echoing this, Akhtar said: 'We had a detailed discussion on cross border firing. Both border guarding forces felt such things should not happen.'
'We will better our mechanisms and ensure that the parameters, which we discussed here will be told to every trooper on the border. I am sure we will get better results,' he said.
'Both the forces will work to ensure that such ceasefire violations do not take place at all,' he added.
In the meeting issues like cross-border firing, smuggling of arms, drugs and fake currency, as well as infiltration, were discussed.
Talking about fake Indian currency notes being smuggled across the border from Pakistan, Akhtar said: 'It is not correct to say that fake currency is being pumped across the border. Fake currency can be made anywhere in the world. It can be manufactured in India too. The maximum consumption of fake Indian currency is in India only.'
The BSF and Pakistan Rangers officers also decided to share inputs on movement of criminals on a regular basis, which will improve border management considerably.
'Fact is that border population often does not realise that they have crossed the international border. In such cases we are trying to treat it as a humanitarian matter and we have decided to take every possible measure to quickly verify the intention, precedence, identity of the individual,' Bansal said.
This would help in such innocents not being arrested on either side of the border and languish in prisons for several years, he said
'I hope this measure will go in a long way in conducting the mandate of the border guarding force in a humanitarian manner,' he added.
Bansal also noted that the BSF and the Pakistan Rangers had coordinated with each other to ensure that no infiltration and crossing over the boundary from either side takes place.
This is the first time that the dialogue between the two border guarding forces was held in the Indian capital. On earlier occasions, it was held in cities such as Amritsar, Chandigarh and Jalandhar.
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