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sent an official to discuss the matter with Pakistani officials in Karachi. The Paki-stani Government however, created a number of obstacles against international regulations and the Transit Agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Ministry has frequently received reports of goods being lost or misplaced on their way to Afghanistan, and discrimination between Afghan and Pakistani mer-chandise, which is contrary to the first article of the above-mentioned agreement, takes place. This means that railway trucks are not made readily available for Afghan goods and they get left at the stations for long periods of time. Contrary to the fifth article of the agreement adequate documents are not provided for the Afghan merchandise and this causes much delay. Further, Afghan goods are not allowed to stay in the loading stations longer than 24 hours and so they are coming under demurrage. which costs millions of Afghanis each year. Contrary to the fourth article of the agreement, Afghan transit goods are charged all sorts
of taxes, such as sales, customs fees, addi-tional stamp tax, refugee tax, doorkeeper tax and the like. Each Afghan lorry is charged 12 Pakistani Rupees by the Paki-stani Political Agent at the frontier. This has caused many complaints in the Afghanistan economic and trading circles. The Ministry of Commerce has tried all channels of negotiation with the Paki-stanis ranging from direct talks with officials to correspondence though the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Afghan delegation sent to Pakistan to draw their attention to the actual situation which is a flagrant contradiction of the transit agreement returned to Kabul without achieving any result due to the lack of co-operation of the Pakistani authorities. But on the other hand the transit of Afghan goods through the Soviet Union has run more smoothly than in previous years and the results are very encouraging.
In order to improve the forwarding and delivery activities in the river ports the Ministry of Commerce has opened a Port Trust within the Ministry with branch
Early spring brings millions of these flowers in northern Afghanistan.
Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting. How this was measured.