ISLAMABAD, 16 June — Chief Executive Gen. Pervez Musharraf said yesterday he would seek to change the course of history and make a “new beginning” with archrival India in summit talks planned for next month.
He said on state television that he would go to New Delhi to see Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee with an open mind and urged the Indian leadership to show the same spirit.
Musharraf, who was invited by Vajpayee last month to visit New Delhi for talks to discuss disputes between their countries, acknowledged there had been little progress toward solving their long-festering dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir. But he said he hoped the next round of talks would be different.
“It will be very regrettable if it does not move forward this time, because I am going there with an open mind,” he said.
“I am sure my counterparts in India — the Indian leadership, the Indian government — will also show open-mindedness, and this time we will change the course of history and make a new beginning.
“ If we get cooperation from there, God willing, we will start a new beginning which has not been done before.”
The 74-year-old Vajpayee successfully underwent a second knee replacement operation at a private hospital in Bombay on June 7. Indian officials said he was expected to stay there for 10 days.
Pakistan says Kashmir is the “core issue” for normalization of relations between the two nuclear rivals. But India has insisted issues such as restrictions on trade should be settled first.
According to a newspaper report, Gen. Musharraf will go to New Delhi on July 9 for the summit meeting.
Mass circulated newspaper Jang, quoting “extremely reliable diplomatic and official sources”, said the dates for Musharraf’s three-day visit had been agreed upon.
Meanwhile, Gen. Musharraf has started consulting the country’s politicians on the position he will take on the Kashmir issue which is expected to dominate the summit.
Gen. Musharraf on Thursday held a two-hour meeting with Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, chief of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, who leads a 14-party pro-democracy campaign against military rule. Nasrullah met the general after consulting his colleagues in the ARD. “He will speak from a position of strength if he goes there and is able to say that ‘all the representative organizations of public opinion in Pakistan are in agreement with the things that I am saying to you (Vajpayee)’,” Nasrullah said.
Nasrullah, detained repeatedly in recent months by the military government for trying to hold rallies of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, said he talked with Gen. Musharraf about Kashmir and domestic political issues.
Musharraf, invited by Vajpayee for the first talks since the two nuclear rivals were on the brink of their fourth war in the summer of 1999, is to go to India next month to discuss issues that have bedeviled relations between the nations for half a century. It is the first time Gen. Musharraf, who has banned public gatherings by the nation’s politicians, has consulted them on a national issue.
The decision to consult politicians was taken on Wednesday and a group of politicians including Raja Zafarul Haq of PML-N, Makhdoom Amin Fahim of PPP, Qazi Hussain Ahmed of Jamaat-e-Islami would be invited at a meeting on June 22, Gen. Musharraf is scheduled to meet with religious scholars on June 24 and top media representatives on June 26.
However, party sources said there was no likelihood he would extend the process to former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who he has repeatedly said have no role to play in the country’s politics. Benazir lives in self-imposed exile — and faces corruption charges if she returns — while Sharif was held in jail from the time Musharraf ousted him from power in October 1999 until he went abroad last December. Nasrullah said he told Musharraf the political parties wanted a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue, in line with the desires of the Kashmiri people.
“It is the general’s desire too, as also that of the entire nation, that this dispute is resolved,” Nasrullah added. He said Musharraf was clear that he would not divert from Pakistan’s basic position. The mountainous Himalayan region of Kashmir is at the center of hostilities between Pakistan and India and was the cause of two of three wars between them since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.
India controls about 45 percent of the disputed territory comprising the regions of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Pakistan holds just over a third of the territory.
New Delhi considers all of Kashmir as an integral part of India but Islamabad says Kashmiri people should be given a vote to determine whether they want to join Pakistan or India. Neither country talks of independence.
Political leaders have so far endorsed Musharraf’s efforts to make peace with India
Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil of the Harkatul Mujahedeen, a group fighting Indian troops in Kashmir, has said that the jihad “can be terminated” if the summit made “clear, positive progress” toward a solution. Khalil told Islamabad newspaper Ausaf in an interview that “ jihad would come to an end by itself if Indian troops are withdrawn from the territory.”
