The United Nations welcomed India and Pakistan’s agreement yesterday to open their Kashmir border to earthquake survivors and relief supplies but said getting aid to millions would remain a logistical nightmare. In a statement early yesterday after talks in Islamabad, India and Pakistan agreed to open crossings at five points along the military Line of Control dividing Kashmir from Nov. 7.

A UN-led effort to get food and shelter to survivors of the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed more than 56 000 people, mostly in Pakistani Kashmir but including 1 300 on the Indian side, has been hampered by landslides blocking many mountain roads. With the Himalayan winter just weeks away and over three million people homeless or needing shelter, aid workers fear as many again could die of hunger and exposure unless help reaches them quickly.

The United Nations welcomed the agreement and said it would be meeting with the government to assess how it would facilitate relief work, but warned huge difficulties remained. “It will certainly not do any harm, but it will certainly not solve the logistical nightmare we are facing,” said UN emergency coordinator Jan Vandemoortele. “It is absolutely positive, but it will not turn mountains into plains. We are still planning to get a major airlift going throughout the winter.”

Natasha Hryckow, UN logistics coordinator in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, said the agreement should make a huge difference when it came to reaching large numbers of people cut off near the border, such as in the Neelum river valley. “If we had the potential to open it from the other side, we could start getting road access to areas we can only fly helicopters to at the moment. That’s obviously going to make a huge impact on how much we can shift in and how many people we can keep in those areas.”

Frustration over slow aid

A spokesman for the government of Pakistani Kashmir, Abdul Khaliq Wasi, called the agreement “a very good thing” and said it would help those who had yet to receive assistance, but he added: “It should have happened much earlier.” Some Kashmiri families will undoubtedly benefit, but large movements of people are unlikely given the massive destruction of roads and bridges and the complex bureaucratic process involved in getting permission from both governments to cross.

Amanullah Khan, head of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, said the agreement would only benefit a few people and help make the border division permanent. “The benefit will be much less than the political costs,” he said. Chakothi, a Pakistani town near one of the five crossing points to be opened, remains inaccessible by road and residents have expressed frustration at the delay in aid supplies.

“The government hasn’t given us anything. If India will, why not?” said Syed Ali, an elderly man with a long white beard. Getting aid across will mean much more work. The Friendship Bridge opened to allow the start of a bus service between the two sides of Kashmir this year has been badly damaged and army engineers on both sides are battling to clear many landslides.

The United Nations has complained about a slow donor response to its appeals for emergency funds. It says unusually heavy snow is expected in the earthquake zone within weeks and thousands more lives are at risk unless donors give another $250 million. Vandemoortele said several countries had now responded to the UN appeal. “We hope that this week there will be a major change in commitments and contributions.”

News of a series of bomb attacks in New Delhi on Saturday, which killed at least 57 people, overshadowed the Islamabad talks, but did not appear to affect the outcome, even though suspicion inevitably focused on Pakistani-backed militants.

Despite an obcure Kashmiri miliant group claming responsibility for the blast, the main Pakistani-backed Kashmiri militant group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, said the blasts were not the work of guerrillas fighting Indian rule. “It is out of question that the mujahideen would attack innocent civilians. In this situation when Kashmir has been hit by a disastrous earthquake, such an attack could only be a conspiracy,” spokesman Salim Hashmi said without elaborating.

The border agreement came after Pakistan strongly condemned the bombings and will go some way to dispel perceptions that New Delhi and Islamabad were wasting time scoring points against each other during the disaster. Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir and went close to a fourth in 2002 after an attack on the Indian parliament New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-backed militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

They agreed a ceasefire on the Line of Control in 2003 and have resumed a peace process, but progress has been limited by inability to agree a long-term solution for Kashmir. Pakistan is accepting some relief supplies from India, which has offered $25 million in aid, but has refused to let Indian troops join the rescue work on Pakistani soil.

Robert BIRSEL