The Hindu : I won't be a hurdle to peace process: Musharraf

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 28, 2003

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I won't be a hurdle to peace process: Musharraf

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD MAY 27. The Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, has said that he would not be a hurdle to the peace process between India and Pakistan and expected the dialogue to take place between the two Prime Ministers, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali.

Gen. Musharraf was responding to a specific question at a gathering of businesspersons on Monday night. Interestingly, he has spoken on the same lines in the course of a telephone interview to the Pakistan Urdu daily, Jang. Observers have found it intriguing that he should be speaking to a Pakistani daily, with offices in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, over the phone.

He was asked whether Mr. Vajpayee wanted to give an impression that Gen. Musharraf was an "obstacle" in the way of a dialogue. The General said he was not a hurdle to talks with India.

``The Indian Prime Minister has talked to our Prime Minister, who will talk to him (Mr. Vajpayee). We have taken the first step towards improvement of relations with India and Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali first contacted the Indian leadership. We have thoughtfully taken initiative for (the) restoration of ties with India. I am fully backing the Prime Minister on the initiative,'' he said.

In response to a query on the Indian proposal for intelligence sharing with Pakistan to check terrorism, he said if any concrete proposal came from India, Pakistan was ready to look into it. "In this regard, we will see that how and why the two countries can share intelligence,'' he said.

In a related development, an inter-ministerial meeting at the Foreign Office on Monday reviewed the progress of Pakistan-India relations since the Prime Minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali's telephonic contact with Mr. Vajpayee on April 28.

The purpose of the meeting was to take stock of the post-April 28 situation and to evaluate the progress. Presided over by the Foreign Secretary, Riaz Khokhar, the main objective of the conference was to coordinate with the Ministries concerned to get their standpoints on various issues related to the confidence-building measures announced by both sides.

On the issue of granting the Most Favoured Nation status to India, the general view was Islamabad should proceed cautiously.

It appears there was some concern over what was perceived as the New Delhi's "reluctance" towards addressing some issues to the exclusion of others contrary to Pakistan's position of discussing all issues simultaneously, including the "core issue of Kashmir."

The revival of a police case against Pakistan's former Deputy High Commissioner in New Delhi, Jalil Abbas Jilani, has also been a matter of concern. Mr. Jilani figures in the second column in the FIR filed by the Delhi police in connection with the alleged provision of funds to Kashmiri freedom fighters.

It is believed that Pakistan had already provided consular access to 261 of the total 344 Indian fishermen in Pakistani jails.

An official told the meeting that once the Indian side confirmed fishermen's national status they would be repatriated to India.

The meeting was told that India had confirmed the status of six of the total 22 Sikh youth detained in Pakistan and that the moment the status of the remaining 16 was confirmed, they would all be repatriated.

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