LAHORE, Jan 13: Sardar Muhammad Abdul Qayyum Khan, a former president and prime minister of Azad Kashmir, says the next round of Pakistan and India talks to be held in February will determine whether the process started with the recent parleys between President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee in Islamabad will lead to the settlement of the dispute over Kashmir or the situation has to revert to square one.

Talking to a group of group of reporters here on Tuesday, the senior Kashmiri leader proposed that both countries should work out a roadmap to resolve the dispute as this was the only way to bring an end to what India calls gun running going on in occupied Kashmir.

He was of the view that President Musharraf should broaden the process of consultations and take opinion from all parties. But at the same time, he said, the general should learn a lesson from the mistakes made by various leaders in the past and put not the Kashmir issue on the back burner on assurance from any country that it would decide it subsequently.

The Kashmiri leader said that since both the nuclear armed rivals had shown flexibility on their stated stand, the Kashmir dispute appeared headed for a solution. In case the opportunity was not grabbed, the region would face disastrous consequences, he warned.

Sardar Qayyum showered praise on President Musharraf for his commitment to the Kashmir cause and said it would not be fair to say that the general had made a departure from Pakistan's principled and consistent stand by saying that the Kashmir issue could be solved even without UN resolutions. In his opinion this was an attempt to set the ball rolling and engage India in talks. In case the gesture was not reciprocated, the former AJK president said, Pakistan would invoke the world body's resolutions.

He said the general's statement should be taken as part of strategy, not change of the goals. In response to a question, he agreed that the tempo of the freedom struggle in occupied Kashmir had slowed after the ceasefire. But, he hastened to add that it should not be taken as a negative signal. He argued that no movement could stay steady for a long time and ups and downs were part of the natural process.

He believed that the movement would go on even when only a 100 committed freedom fighters were left in the field. About split in the APHC, the Kashmiri leader said all leaders had same objectives in mind, and Maulana Abbas Ansari, head of a faction of the body, would not say anything different from his past statements in case he held a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani.

He believed that APHC leaders should soon settle their differences. Responding to a question about US offer to India for cooperation in the nuclear field at a time when it was also urging Islamabad and New Delhi to settle the Kashmir issue through talks, Sardar Qayyum Khan said Pakistan's nuclear programme was an irritant for the western countries and they were waiting for an opportunity to get it wound up. These countries, he said, were trying to have the Kashmir issue settled to be able to focus attention on Pakistan's nuclear programme.