ISLAMABAD, Nov 24: Two senior ruling coalition figures said on Wednesday that Pakistan wanted all shades of Kashmiri leadership to join India-Pakistan talks to settle the festering Kashmir dispute between the two nuclear rivals.

But in meetings with a group of visiting journalists from India and Indian-held Kashmir, one of them voiced difference on President Pervez Musharraf's calls to consider options other than a UN-mandated plebiscite for a solution.

Ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) secretary general Mushahid Hussain said at a dinner he hosted for the group that Islamabad had no favourites between the two rival factions of the anti-India All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) alliance.

This, he said, was evident from meeting held by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz with leaders of both factions in New Delhi on Tuesday. In Pakistan, he said the government had sought to take into confidence Kashmiri leaders of divergent opinions such as former Azad Kashmir president Sardar Abdul Qayyum whose All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference wanted Kashmir's accession to Pakistan and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Amanullah Khan who wanted Kashmir to be independent of both India and Pakistan.

Parliamentary Kashmir Committee chairman Hamid Nasir Chattha earlier told the same group that leadership of a cross-section of Kashmiris should become part of the dialogue. But he said his committee, comprising members from both the ruling coalition and opposition parties, did not agree with President Musharraf's recent statements that options other UN resolutions calling for a plebiscite in the disputed Himalayan state be considered for a settlement between India and Pakistan.

He said he did not agree with the president's proposal "in the sense that Pakistan should not deviate from its original stance" for a plebiscite - to choose between Pakistan and India for accession - unless all the three parties sat together.

"The ideal solution would be to have a plebiscite," he said. "But to get to that stage we will have to involve Kashmiri people from all walks of life." He urged the Indian government to involve Kashmiris in the talks so that a conclusion reached in the talks could be acceptable to all.

"We don't hold too many expectations (about the success of the dialogue) unless Kashmiris are part of the dialogue," said Mr Chattha, who talked to the members of the group at a lunch he hosted for them.

At dinner at night, Mr Mushahid Hussain, who is also chairman of the Senate foreign affairs committee, said the atmosphere for the talks was good as both India and Pakistan had now recognised after their 'nuclearization' that war was no longer an option between them.

He said nuclearisation had created a new confidence in Pakistan about its security and India-bashing "no longer sells" in the country. "In Pakistan, there is no constituency that seeks confrontation with India," he said. But he said Pakistan-bashing still served in parts of India. In reply to a question, he said the armed struggle in the Indian-occupied Kashmir was indigenous and the result of Indian "oppression" while Pakistan supported it as a moral obligation.

"We did not create it, we did not start it," he said about the 15-year-old Kashmiri uprising. "It is your problem, you will have to solve it," he added. The journalists' group earlier met Jammu and Kashmir People's Party president Khalid Ibrahim who said his party stood for a plebiscite in Kashmir but could consider other options as well.