NEW DELHI, Nov 12: Pakistan sees Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee as the one Indian leader who truly understands the seriousness of the Kashmir issue and who can resolve the dispute, Information Minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmed said on Wednesday. But Mr Ahmed also recalled at a news conference at the end of a Saarc ministerial meeting that President Pervez Musharraf was so certain of a pact with Mr Vajpayee at the end of the Agra Summit that he was getting ready for a formal photograph when the move was apparently shot down.

“He (President Musharraf) told me that he had gone to change into his formal clothes for the formal picture. But when he came down, everything had changed. There was nothing to sign, he was told. So what could he do, except to return home.” “No politician can afford to close the doors to dialogue, no matter how insurmountable the difficulties are,” the information minister said. “Politicians never deny dialogue. Politics is about dialogue.”

He said Mr Vajpayee was the only hope for peace between India and Pakistan. “He (the Indian leader) is a man of vision. He is a bold man. He can take bold decisions,” Mr Ahmed said.

Mr Ahmed was privy to the summit talks when Mr Vajpayee met the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore. “I was there at the talks, I am there today. I know he (Mr Vajpayee) has believed that Kashmir is a bit more serious than India’s claim of it being an integral part or of Pakistan’s insistence that it is its jugular vein. Vajpayee knows that with such views in the fore no progress could be made. “So he is one politician in India who is familiar with the seriousness of the issues involved. One who is experienced to resolve them.” Mr Ahmed denied claims by Indian reporters that Pakistan harassed its Kashmiri leaders, including JKLF leader Amanullah Khan who was frequently jailed. “He is my friend and a regular critic too. There is no problem with Mr Amanullah. It is an old story that you recount.” He urged India to release seven Pakistani children who had strayed across the border. “It is the Children’s Day on Friday, it would be a good occasion to free them then.” Asked if or why Pakistan was obstructing peace move with India, he countered: “Pakistan has the leadership which, if you move one step, will take two instead.” “It is time to end this persistence with extremism, to flaunt the force of might, the threat of missiles, arms stockpiles. This language has to stop, because if you persist then, out of fear, we too will do it. Only the poor in our nations will suffer.” He reiterated Pakistan’s support for China and Iran to be accepted as members of Saarc, but said the move was in its initial stages. Mr Ahmed described India as a “new blue-eyed boy” of America just as Pakistan has been all these days. “So today you have to willy-nilly accept the reality that there is a superpower that gets us to talk, to withdraw our forces from the borders, to prevent one from attacking the other. That is the reality. The rest is theory.”