NEW DELHI, April 18: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured a group of visiting Pakistani editors on Monday that the design of the controversial Baglihar hydroelectric project in Jammu and Kashmir could be changed if it was found to be violating the Indus water treaty with Pakistan.

“Nothing will be done which violates the Indus Water Basin Treaty in letter and spirit,” Dr Singh stressed and said: “If weighty and credible evidence is demonstrated to us in its design we are duty bound to rectify it.”

The prime minister also said he was highly satisfied with the “productive and positive” results of his discussions with President Gen Pervez Musharraf.

He cautioned that the road ahead may be difficult but the two countries could not shirk from their responsibilities. “There is no single royal road to success but we are moving forward. We cannot resolve problems in one meeting. We have evolved a certain amount of commonality,” he told the visitors.

On the issue of Kashmir, Dr Singh said that territorial disputes could not be resolved immediately but “we can make solutions more amenable to reason” when humanitarian aspects of the problem were addressed.