NEW DELHI, Dec 5: For the first time in 50 years, a Saudi king will visit India next month, but not without bringing with him a message of peace from Pakistan’s President Gen Pervez Musharraf and from Kashmir’s Hurriyat Conference, informed sources said on Monday.

King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz has been invited by New Delhi to be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade held annually on Jan 26, official sources said.

The informal Indian announcement of the landmark visit coincides with a special summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) called on Dec 7-8 in Makkah by King Abdullah. Gen Musharraf will be present at the closed door meeting along with Kashmir’s Mirwaiz Maulvi Umar Farooq, the current Hurriyat chairman.

While the Mirwaiz and Gen Musharraf are expected to take the opportunity to go over their respective feedbacks from their recent meetings with Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh about Kashmir, the Saudi king’s visit next month will inevitably bring in a totally new dimension to the South Asian equation.

So far the Saudi establishment has been critical of India’s handling of its more than 12 per cent Muslims out of more than a billion people. Issues such as the Ayodhya incident in 1992 and the endless blood letting in Kashmir have usually prompted aloofness between the two.

The fact that the Voice of America has announced the visit ahead of any other media in the concerned countries is being seen as indication that the United States is actively involved in the rare event.

India had so far leaned on Iraq and the Palestine Liberation Organisation for their consistent support of New Delhi’s claim on Kashmir. On some occasions India had allowed Iran to speak out, even “meddle” with it, on this sensitive matter.

This will also be the first visit by a Saudi monarch in about 50 years. King Saud had last visited India in 1955, which was reciprocated by India’s first Prime Minster Jawaharlal Nehru in 1956.

Indian media is giving credit for the visit to former foreign minister Jaswant Singh.

King Abdullah’s visit marks the quiet diplomatic work being done for many years by Riyadh and New Delhi, noted one Indian journal.

“Interestingly, Indo-Saudi relations gathered steam with the visit of former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh’s three-day visit in 2001,” it noted.

Informed sources said that as the widely-acknowledged fulcrum of the OIC, King Abdullah’s views on Kashmir would be of crucial importance to all concerned.

He is expected to be both heard out and heeded in New Delhi, informed sources told Dawn. What ideas and insights he may have to offer on Kashmir would be inevitably influenced by his meetings with the Kashmiri and the Pakistani leaders in Makkah, the sources said.