Kasuri reaffirms desire for peace with India: Foreign ministers meet in Jakarta today
JAKARTA, July 1: Pakistan's new prime minister wants peace with India and in the past had even written to Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party, Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said on Thursday.
Mr Kasuri said he would hold a bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart, Natwar Singh, on Friday on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Regional Forum that now groups 24 members with the entry of Pakistan this year.
"I have no doubt that Chaudhry Shujaat, the new prime minister, is also for peace," Mr Kasuri told Reuters in an interview. "I have no doubt there will be no interruption," Mr Kasuri said of the tentative peace process with nuclear neighbour India.
President Pervez Musharraf was very positive about the talks, he said, adding that he looked forward to a meeting between Musharraf and the new Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, but gave no timetable.
"I would want a highest level relationship... but I would not want the leaders to meet without due preparation," he said. India and Pakistan vowed to press ahead with discussions on Kashmir on Monday after their first formal talks on the flashpoint region in three years, boosting hopes of a lasting peace in South Asia.
ON THE BUSES: After two days of talks two years after almost coming to war, they finalized plans to return their embassies to full strength, reopen consulates in each other's financial capitals, release fishermen who strayed across the border and inform each other of missile tests.
However, analysts have said the talks fell far short of real concrete action, for example a proposal to increase contacts between people in Kashmir with the launch of a bus service across a ceasefire line that divides the region.
"We will make it easy," Mr Kasuri said, adding that he did not think such a service would take long to arrange. "We will not be a hurdle. We will do all that it takes, including paving the roads," he said of a bus route that he described as a service to human rights by uniting families divided for decades as a result of war.
However, Mr Kasuri cited an Indian requirement for passport formalities as an obstacle since that raised the issue of sovereignty. "We would welcome (the travel) if it is not on passports and visas that would imply a level of predetermination of the issue," he said.
Mr Kasuri said he was looking forward to another meeting with his Indian counterpart, saying that he had taken the phone to speak to Mr Singh himself when the Indian High Commissioner called his Pakistani colleague in his car on Thursday to set up the meeting. "I feel very strongly there are major suspicions when you don't talk to each other, you don't know each other," he said. -Reuters
