|
Home>News Center>World | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Musharraf wraps up India trip with Kashmir warning
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf warned that Kashmir remained a flashpoint between India and Pakistan but said progress in weekend talks with leaders in New Delhi had exceeded expectations.
The "core issue" of Kashmir, Musharraf told Indian media on Monday before wrapping up a three-day visit to India, would take time as a solution acceptable to India, Pakistan and Kashmiris, had to be found.
Ruling out a military option, he warned, however, "Unless we resolve the dispute it can erupt again under a future frame."
India and Pakistan both hold Kashmir in part but claim it in full and have fought two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 over the Himalayan region.
"It is only one dispute which will take time and that is the Kashmir dispute because it needs a lot of attention and lot of wisdom towards arriving at a conclusions."
He was upbeat about progress made on issues of dispute with India in his talks at the weekend with Indian leaders.
"I think it is more than I expected and you will know that when the joint statement is issued," he said, referring to a document summing up progress the two sides made on Kashmir and other disputed issues slated to be released before he departs.
The general's buoyant mood this time round contrasted with his last trip across the border in 2001 for a summit with then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in the northern India city of Agra, which collapsed over the issue of Kashmir and he left in a huff.
Musharraf set the tone for the weekend when he arrived Saturday bearing what he said was a "message of peace from Pakistan", which he confirmed with a "prayer for peace" at the tomb of Persian Sufi holyman Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti in the Rajasthan city of Ajmer.
His mood was matched by Singh, who declared at a banquet he hosted for the Pakistani leader, "The people of South Asia do not need further divisions, but greater unity."
Sunday started with Singh and Musharraf, who first met in New York last September, heading down -- in bulletproof cars -- to the local cricket stadium to watch the opening overs of a one-day cricket match between the two nations.
They later settled into political talks which, in contrast to the icy Agra summit, were "very warm" according to officials.
They agreed in their talks their countries should boost road and rail links, revive a panel to promote trade and introduce other trust-building measures, most notably to allow increased contact between people living on either side of divided Kashmir.
Singh and Musharraf also agreed to increase the frequency of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service across divided Kashmir, which was relaunched on April 7 after a gap of almost 60 years.
New Delhi too acknowledged that a solution to the decades-old dispute over Kashmir is still some way off.
"There is a recognition that this is an issue which needs to be tackled between the two countries. But it is a complicated issue it may take time to resolve," Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told a media briefing after the talks. On Sunday evening, Musharraf came face to face with Kashmiri politics when he held meetings with Indian Kashmir separatist leaders and was told by hardline leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani the India-Pakistan peace process was "ignoring" the wishes of Kashmiris, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. In a 90-minute-long meeting that included the Pakistan foreign minister, Geelani rejected a proposal for unity among the separatist leaders, some of whom want to join the peace talks between India and Pakistan. |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
