ISLAMABAD, Sept 20: The foreign office said here on Monday that although talks between Pakistan and India had remained 'sluggish' on Jammu and Kashmir, the forthcoming meeting in New York between leaders of the two countries would hopefully 'add substance' to the Kashmir dialogue, providing rationale and a firm direction to their negotiators when the dialogue entered its second phase by the end of the year.

Responding to questions relating to expectations from the first scheduled meeting between President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on the sidelines of UN General Assembly's session, the foreign office spokesman, Mr Masood Khan, also said that the president had been 'misquoted and misinterpreted' about his remarks concerning a timeframe for the ongoing bilateral composite talks, particularly on Jammu and Kashmir.

The spokesman said no-one could deny the complexity of the issue but it was not intractable. What the president had stated was that the dialogue should be "result-oriented and there should be a broad timeframe, reasonable timeframe, in mind. Our leaders have talked about reasonable timelines". Mindful of the complexity of the Kashmir issue which needed "a lot of time to discuss it".

But it should not be an "endless process, it should not be an infinite process," he observed. "It has to be brought to a closure," Mr Khan said, expressing the hope that given the political will and statesmanship, the two sides should be able to manage the time in a manner that it was related to the goal to resolve the Jammu and Kashmir issue in a such a way that "it is durable enough to promise justice to the Kashmiris and promise peace, stability and security in South Asia".

He called for a compressed timeframe focussed on the Kashmir issue instead of discussing it for the next two decades. As for the confidence-building measures between the two countries which had been discussed during the first cycle of the composite dialogue this summer, he said, they were on the right track in creating an environment for the result-oriented dialogue.

Replying to questions about statements reported largely in the Western and some other foreign media expressing doubts about Islamabad's determination and will to weed out extremists belonging to Al Qaeda and Taliban from Pakistani soil, the spokesman declared that it should be clearly known that the extremists who were now on the run, could not afford 'the luxury' of assembling on Pakistani territory for reorganizing their terrorists activities in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

He also debunked foreign media reports alleging that Pakistan was attempting to disrupt the planned electoral process in Afghanistan next month and later in 2005. Mr Khan reiterated that Islamabad unreservedly supported completion of the Afghan electoral process and wanted reconstruction of the war-torn Afghanistan to proceed smoothly to which this country also wished to make contribution.

He hoped that the United Nations would augment the multinational peace-enforcing force from its existing strength of 6,500 to about 9,000 to ensure completion of the Afghan electoral process peacefully.

Answering a question about Pakistan's position on the debate in the United Nations on proposed reforms which include enlarging the circle of the five permanent members with the right to veto, the spokesman reiterated that Pakistan did not want any 'new centres of privilege' in the Security Council as a matter of principle, although since its inception some 50 years ago the UN now comprised a much larger membership.

It, however, recognized the need to enlarge the membership of the Security Council from its present strength of 15 but without veto power, by including non-permanent members to give representation to several other world regions.

He maintained that there had been no change in Pakistan's position on India's effort to get a seat on the Security Council which implied opposition to India's aspiration mainly because of its record of flouting UN resolutions on Kashmir requiring the holding of a UN-supervized plebiscite to resolve the dispute.