ISLAMABAD, 14 January 2007 — Pakistan and India held high-level talks and discussed ways to give a boost to the peace process. The dialogue yesterday also included the contentious issue of Kashmir, sources said.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf met with India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee yesterday, shortly after he arrived here to review the progress in peace talks between the nuclear-armed rivals, a government official said.
Pranab and Musharraf discussed the core issues of Kashmir and “pledged to carry forward the peace process” the two neighbors had initiated in 2004, the official said.
The official quoted Musharraf as telling Pranab that the resolution of the Kashmir issue was crucial for peace in the region.
Musharraf said in a statement after meeting Pranab that confidence-building measures taken so far had “created a conducive atmosphere to resolve outstanding issues.”
He said greater cooperation between the two nations, which have remained at odds since independence in 1947, would flow from settling three disputes.
The most problematical issue remains how to bring lasting peace to the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir. Levels of infiltration by militants into Indian Kashmir from Pakistan have fallen in the last three years, but militants have mounted bomb attacks in other parts of India.
Other disputes mentioned by Musharraf were Siachen Glacier, an icy wasteland the two armies have fought over since the 1980s, and Sir Creek, an estuary flowing into the Arabian Sea. “All the issues were discussed, including the difficult ones,” Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna told reporters after Pranab’s meeting with Musharraf.
“They also discussed how to move this relationship forward from this point.”
Later, Pranab held talks with his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri.After meeting Kasuri, Pranab announced that both the countries had agreed to hold 4th round of “composite dialogue” on March 13-14 in Islamabad. He will meet political party leaders today.
The nuclear-armed rivals began a peace process in 2004 after they went to a brink of a fourth war in 2002. Sports and travel links have been restored, but there has been little progress on Kashmir, the cause of two of the three wars fought earlier.
The rivals have, however, sought to reduce risks of nuclear war by sharing information on weapons and creating a hotline. Musharraf was characteristically upbeat on the eve of Pranab’s visit.
“We will achieve results maybe sooner than we expect. If resolve and flexibility is shown by the leadership, we will be able to resolve the disputes, including the Kashmir issue,” the official Associated Press of Pakistan quoted Musharraf as saying on Friday.
“I see hope at the end of tunnel.” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has adopted a similar tone in recent weeks, after a cooling in relations following bomb attacks by Islamist militants on the Indian city of Mumbai in July that killed 186 people. Manmohan said last week he earnestly hoped relations between the two countries would eventually become good enough to agree on a treaty of peace, security and friendship.
Last month, Musharraf repeated an offer for Pakistan to give up its claim on Kashmir if India agreed to soften the border dividing Kashmiris and let them administer their own affairs with oversight from both Islamabad and New Delhi.
Singh did not respond directly, but he welcomed a phased approach to resolving Kashmir’s problems.
Pranab has invited Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to attend a South Asia summit in New Delhi in April. But Pakistan is hoping Singh will finally visit Pakistan this year.
