ISLAMABAD, Jan 7: Former president of Azad Jammu & Kashmir Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan has stressed the need for taking some follow-up steps after the successful Vajpayee-Musharraf meeting in order "to be able to enter the composite dialogue fully prepared."

He said the leaders on both sides should find out the causes of failure of earlier attempts to establish peace between their two countries so that the new move does not meet with the same fate.

In an open letter released on Thursday, the veteran Kashmiri leader listed the following points:

a) The ceasefire should invariably include the Kashmiris who were being targeted with a nefarious plan of wiping out the youth under the pretext of (quelling) resistance maliciously named terrorism. Merely stopping the weapons which fire is not the total ceasefire.

b) Declaration of main features of a roadmap to peace (be spelled out which) is equally important, rather unavoidable. Only that will pacify the situation.

c) A declaration of intent (be made) to withdraw the troops, for the time being at least, from the population centres.

d) Draconian and inhuman laws imposed during the recent decades be withdrawn.

e) All prisoners be released and extra-judicial killings brought to an end.

f) Free movement of leaders (be allowed).

g) Efforts at changing the demographic, cultural, economic and religious identity of the Kashmiris be stopped.

h) Means must be devised, in collaboration with all other parties, to allow the Kashmiris to decide their fate in accordance with any proposal that was acceptable to the three parties.

Sardar Qayyum pointed out that the long-desired ceasefire was immediately being used for fencing the LoC "to shut off IHK to Kashmiris." This simply confirms the suspicions about the intention of the party. It openly violates the very spirit of the ceasefire, he said.

He said to expect the ceasefire line "as we Kashmiris call it" could be converted into a permanent border "is grossly unrealistic and untenable." President Musharraf was not wrong to say that the "control line is a problem not a solution".