INDIA AND PAKISTAN EXCHANGE LISTS OF NUCLEAR ASSETS

By Shakir Husain

NEW DELHI, Jan 1 (Bernama) -- India and Pakistan on Thursday exchanged the lists of nuclear installations and facilities as they do each year on the first day of January.

The lists were handed over simultaneously in Islamabad and New Delhi through their diplomats as part of the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities.

"This is the 35th consecutive exchange of such lists between the two countries, the first one having taken place on 1 January 1992," India's Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

The bilateral pact was signed on Dec 31, 1988 and entered into force on Jan 27, 1991.

In May last year, the two nuclear-armed countries were involved in a military conflict in which fighter jets, missiles and drones were used.

Their confrontation raised global concerns that it could potentially turn into a wider conflagration.

On Wednesday, Pakistan Parliament Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar shook hands at the funeral of former Bangladesh prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia in Dhaka, marking the first high-level contact between the two countries since the conflict.

-- BERNAMA