SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - India and Pakistan will open a historic trade link across divided Kashmir for the first time in six decades on Tuesday, a step aimed at reducing tensions between the two nuclear powers.

Kashmiri people stand next to lorries adorned with decorations to mark the opening of a historic trade link across the divided Kashmir after they are loaded with apples bound for Pakistan-administered Kashmir, at a fruit market in Srinagar October 20, 2008. REUTERS/Danish Ismail

The decision, taken only last month, to allow limited trade across the military frontline in Kashmir symbolizes attempts to solve the dispute by creating “soft borders” allowing the free movement of goods and people.

But the history of war and mistrust means progress is likely to remain slow and intermittent. A bus service between divided Kashmir, launched with much fanfare in 2005, has floundered in a sea of bureaucracy.

Lorries will roll on both sides of the 170-km (110-mile) Himalayan mountain highway which was the region’s vital and only surface link with the rest of the world before the partition of subcontinent in 1947.

For the time being, trade will take place just once a week, with a limited list of goods allowed. Kashmiri handicrafts and apples will be exported from the Indian side, although it is unclear if carpets and shawls will be allowed across.

It will be the first time vehicles will be allowed across the ceasefire line and the newly constructed Aman Setu or Peace Bridge since the 1948 war, with the lorries expected to drive a few kilometers inside rival territory and unload.

Kashmir’s governor N.N. Vohra said the opening of a trade route would be an “important milestone” in India-Pakistan relations.

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India has moved slowly on opening up the borders, believing that they could boost separatist militant attacks on Indian forces from bases in Pakistan.

TERRITORIAL ISSUE

The South Asian neighbors who claim Kashmir in full but rule in parts have fought two wars over the region and were on the verge of a third in 2002 before pulling back from the brink.

The opening is the latest in tentative peace moves that have done little to resolve the central territorial issue.

But it does go toward meeting one of the demands of separatist groups, who have been leading months of anti-India protests, some of the biggest in years.

“The trade between two Kashmirs is a good beginning. Our ultimate aim is the line of control between two parts is removed,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chief of Kashmir’s separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference.

Seven protesters were shot dead by Indian security forces in August when they marched to the border demanding the opening of the road to the Pakistani side.

At least 42 people have been killed by government forces and at least 1,000 wounded in the protests that followed.

The road also makes business sense. It is all-weather and shorter than the other main trade route supplying Kashmir, a road to India that snakes through to the Hindu-majority Jammu region and is often blocked by snow in winter.

A bus service connecting Srinagar, Indian Kashmir’s summer capital, and Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, was launched in 2005, one of many confidence-building measures undertaken since the two sides began a peace process in 2004.

But due to elaborate security checks, suffocating bureaucracy and mistrust, only 9,000 passengers from the divided region traveled across the ceasefire line since a “peace bus” was launched four years ago.