History turned full circle when Pakistan's Minister of State for Finance and Economic Affairs, Umer Ayub Khan, signed a petition to the World Bank raising a dispute over the Baglihar hydropower project under the Indus Waters Treaty.

His grandfather, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, and India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had signed the treaty in 1960.

Umer Ayub Khan signed the petition seeking the appointment of an arbitrator by the World Bank to resolve the dispute with India over the project being implemented in Jammu and Kashmir [Images].

Besides him, Pakistan's Indus Water Commissioner, Sayed Jamat Ali Shah, signed the petition, reports said.

Foreign office spokesperson Masood Khan, while announcing his government's decision to approach the World Bank, described the treaty distributing six rivers between India and Pakistan as the most enduring confidence-building measure, which had survived two wars.

Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States, former army chief General Jehangir Karamat, filed the petition before World Bank President James D Wolfenson in Washington, DC on Tuesday.