MUZAFFARABAD, May 3: Kashmir’s dominant Mujahideen group, Hizbul Mujahideen said on Saturday it saw a ray of hope in Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s speech but sounded caution that peace in South Asia would remain a dream in the presence of the unresolved Kashmir issue.

“The speech of Mr Vajpayee is encouraging and we can see a ray of hope in it,” supreme commander of the group Syed Salahuddin said in a statement here.

“On the face of it, Mr Vajpayee seems to be getting ready to resolve the long-pending issues with Pakistan, provided he does not repeat what his predecessors have been doing in this regard since 1947,” he said.

The Hizb leader emphasized that the peace overtures by the Indian leader should not prove a “mere diplomatic exercise to defuse international pressure.”

“The whole world knows that the Kashmir issue can destroy peace not only in South Asia, it poses potential threat to the global peace as well,” Mr Salahuddin said.

He said it was the Kashmir issue that had kept the two neighbours on the warpath ever since their freedom, and peace would remain a distant dream if it was not amicably resolved in accordance with the aspirations of the Kashmiris.

“India and Pakistan can save the huge financial resources they are currently wasting on weapons and utilize this money on the welfare and betterment of their people,” he said.

Mr Salahuddin said if the Indian government was really sincere in making the talks meaningful, it should give up “traditional intransigence, dilly-delaying tactics and attempts to gain diplomatic mileage and instead take measures in consultation with Islamabad and the Kashmiri leadership to resolve the longstanding Kashmir dispute.”

Otherwise, he warned, a little flare could turn out to be the basis of a nuclear holocaust in the region.

Expressing the hope that the Indian leaders would not take a long time to realize the bitter facts, the Hizb leader said the time was near when the struggle of the Kashmiris would bear fruit.