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Pakistan Says India Wants to Team Up to Fight Locusts

Ayaz Gul

   ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has confirmed that arch-rival India is proposing a
   trilateral response in partnership with Iran to fight a crop-killing
   desert locust invasion, which threatens food security for millions of
   people across the region.

   India's rare offer of cooperation comes amid escalating military
   tensions with Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region, worsening
   historically strained relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

   "We have received a proposal from India," Pakistani Foreign Ministry
   spokesperson Aisha Farooqui told VOA.

   "We believe that a well-coordinated response is critical to deal with
   the challenge posed by desert locusts," she stressed. She would not say
   what Islamabad's possible response to the Indian proposal would be.

   Farooqui, however, noted that Pakistan was "working closely" with
   regional countries, including India and global partners, particularly
   the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to address
   the looming locust threat.

   The ongoing wider regional cooperation is happening under FAO's
   Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in Southwest Asia (SWAC),
   established in 1964 with Afghanistan, India, Iran and Pakistan as its
   members.

   Under the proposed trilateral response, New Delhi has reportedly
   suggested to Islamabad that both countries "coordinate locust control
   operations along the border and that India can facilitate supply of
   malathion, a pesticide, to Pakistan."

   The Hindu newspaper quoted Indian officials as saying that Iran has
   welcomed the offer of pesticide to control desert locusts in the arid
   Iranian province of South Khorasan and the Sistan-Balochistan province
   that borders Pakistan.

   Imminent threat

   Keith Cressman, FAO's senior locust forecasting officer, told VOA that
   India and Pakistan face an "imminent threat of several waves of
   spring-bred swarms" from southwest Pakistan and southern Iran during
   May and June.

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