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Musharraf rules out LoC as permanent border

K S R Menon in Dubai

President Pervez Musharraf has ruled out accepting the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir as the permanent border between India and Pakistan. He, however, said he was willing to extend his trip to India by 48 hours if New Delhi was serious about finding a solution to the dispute.

"LoC is the problem. What is the freedom struggle going on about? It is about the LoC. It is the problem, not the solution. How can the problem be the solution?" General Musharraf, who leaves on Saturday for a three-day visit to India, told Gulf News in an interview published on Friday.

"Now who in Pakistan will ever accept this [LoC]? Nobody in Pakistan can accept this and expect to stay in power... I think it will be very unrealistic for any Indian leader to expect any leader of Pakistan to go and accept the permanence of the LoC," he said.

The general, however, stressed that respecting the LoC was an entirely different matter.

Stating that Kashmir was the "core issue" to be resolved, Musharraf said he was willing to extend his trip if New Delhi was serious about finding a solution.

He said Pakistan was looking towards a step-by-step solution to the issue.

Justifying the invitation to the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference for talks with him in New Delhi, the general said it had been sent because "we feel the Kashmiris, the Hurriyat Conference, ought to be taken along".

"Right from the beginning I have said, and I am of this view even now, that there are three parties to the Kashmir dispute -- the Indians, the Pakistanis and the Kashmiris -- and we believe the Kashmiris' representative is the Hurriyat Conference."

He said he had always maintained that to begin with, India and Pakistan should talk without "Kashmiri representatives, but any time in the future they have to be included in the process of the dialogue if there is to be progress".

Musharraf denied that the army in Pakistan was blocking any move towards peace. "It is the people of Pakistan who will not allow anything to happen between India and Pakistan unless the main conflict is resolved," he said.

In reply to a question, he said that if the talks failed it did not mean the two countries would be close to a nuclear confrontation. "I would not like it to be said that if there is a failure now in Agra, we are closing (sic) to a nuclear holocaust, nothing of the sort," he assured.

Holding that the Agra summit would be the ultimate confidence-building measure, the general said the Simla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration had "failed" because they ignored the "core issue".

"Till now Kashmir has always been sidelined by India and even the Simla accord and the Lahore declaration did not make any progress. That was because it avoided the main issue of Kashmir," he said.

"Anyone, any leadership in Pakistan that makes any agreements, any deals, where Kashmir is sidelined, I can say with full certainty that that declaration or that treaty will never go forward because the people won't let it go forward. And that is why the Simla accord and the Lahore declaration did not move forward," he said.

Stating that he has read "every single agreement and treaty between India and Pakistan", the general said, "I have studied it carefully and nowhere does it mention that Kashmir is the issue. Why is that? ... We must also understand each other's compulsions. I would like to work to lessen the compulsions on the Indian leadership and they should work towards understanding and removing our compulsions."

PTI

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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