Pakistani officials inspect Baglihar project site

A five-member Pakistani delegation inspected on Sunday a controversial power project in occupied Kashmir that Islamabad says violates a World Bank-brokered treaty between Pakistan and India. The Pakistani team led by Syed Jamaat Ali Shah left for Baglihar, 190 kilometres east of Jammu to examine the design of the 450 megawatt power project, an Indian official said.
An Indian delegation accompanied the Pakistani team.
Pakistan, which fears the one-billion-dollar project could deprive its province of Punjab of vital irrigation water, charges that the plant violates a 44-year-old water-sharing Indus Treaty.
The treaty bars India from interfering with the flow of the three rivers feeding Pakistan - the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum - but allows it to generate electricity from them.
Indian occupied Kashmir officials say the 450-megawatt Baglihar project on the Chenab River does not contravene the pact and could go a long way to ending routine 12-hour blackouts plaguing the disputed Himalayan state.
Pakistan says it never approved the project's design as stipulated under the Indus Water Treaty.