Kasuri to beam new proposals of Musharraf in New Delhi
Pakistan Times Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri has said he would present new proposals of President Gen Pervez Musharraf during he meeting with Indian authorities in New Delhi.

He was commenting on the statement of Indian External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, in which had stated India would consider any formal proposal from Pakistan to settle the decades-old dispute over Kashmir, the Himalayan region at the center of two wars between the nuclear-armed neighbor countries.

Focal Point

In an interview, Kasuri said the proposal should be acceptable to both the countries and talks will be with India on President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s proposals.

He said there would be many opportunities of talks with India in which Kashmir dispute will be discussed.

Indo-Pak composite dialogue making progress: Indian PM

Ruling out third party intervention in resolving the Kashmir issue, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday said the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan was making progress and efforts were on to achieve "credible and mutually acceptable solutions" to all outstanding issues including Kashmir.

Defending his decision to cut troops deployment in Jammu and Kashmir, Singh described it as an "experiment" and said "we have taken some risks but they are not unacceptable risks."

Of the Third Party

"There is no scope for third party intervention on Jammu and Kashmir. India and Pakistan are quite capable of dealing with the issues bilaterally on the basis of composite dialogue," he told reporters here when asked about Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's recent formulation on Kashmir.

Musharraf had, in an Iftar dinner on October-25, viewed identification of seven regions on both sides of Kashmir, demilitarize them and change their status through either independence, or joint control or under UN mandate.

Troop Reduction 'Shortly'

Meanwhile, a story from New Delhi says that the Indian army will start to reduce the number of troops in Held Kashmir shortly, in line with an announcement last week by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Indian army chief said on Tuesday.

"This will commence shortly," the chief of army staff General N.C. Vij was quoted as saying by The Press Trust of India in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. He, however, gave no figure on the number of troops to be cut.●