AIR ROUTE V500

Just what is holding things up in the resumption of overflight rights for Indian and Pakistani airliners over each other's territories? We can see no conceivable reason for New Delhi, which started the tit-for-tat, to keep this ban. By making civil aviation a pawn in the geopolitical games it likes to play, India is showing the world how petty it can be. It is exporting its own insecurity. Pakistan loses out more because PIA flights to Bangkok, Manila and Tokyo have to go around India, whereas Air India can just skirt Pakistan on its European flights out of Delhi. If that is how victories are tallied between these two nattering neighbours, then South Asia is headed for some nasty patch of turbulence ahead.

It is not just Pakistan and India that are hit; PIA's four-weekly flights from Karachi and Islamabad to Kathmandu used to be a lifeline for Nepali workers headed to and from the Gulf. It was also an important link for European and North American budget tourists to Nepal and an important route used by all Pakistanis coming to the numerous regional meetings and seminars held in Kathmandu. What India gains by snapping this link and hurting Nepal and regionalism to boot, we haven't figured out yet.