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| Sunday, 22 May 2005 |
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Musharraf wants to resolve kashmir crisis along with Manmohan Singh ISLAMABAD, Saturday (AFP) President Pervez Musharraf Friday said Pakistan and India should try to resolve their dispute over Kashmir while he and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are in power. "I personally feel that it must be done within the tenures of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and myself," he told a gathering here of parliamentarians and journalists from South Asia, including India. Musharraf met Singh last month during his first visit to India since 2001 when a summit with then premier Atal Behari Vajpayee collapsed over Kashmir. "We have an understanding, we have harmony, we have complete understanding between ourselves. This I think is a very big difference between now and the past. "The fleeting moments in history are not available every time; they come and go. The governments and leaders who grasp them create history," Musharraf said. The peace opportunity has been created by a thaw in relations between the two nuclear neighbours and the growing realisation that the flashpoint dispute should be resolved peacefully. The Himalayan state of Kashmir, divided between Pakistan and India and claimed by both in full, has caused two of three wars between the neighbours since their independence in 1947 from Britain. Musharraf said keeping in view the sensitivities of both India and Pakistan a solution had to be found which should be mutually acceptable to all the parties - Pakistan, India and the people of Kashmir. The rivals launched a peace process in January 2004 when Vajpayee visited Pakistan for the 12th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Since then they have restored road and air travel links and people-to-people contacts besides launching a bus service across the disputed borders in Kashmir. The two armies have been observing a truce on the heavily militarised
Line of Control- the de facto border which divide Kashmir between Pakistan
and India - since November 2003. |
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