NEW DELHI, March 25: Kashmir’s spiritual leader Mirwaiz Maulvi Umar Farooq on Friday invited leaders of India and Pakistan to meet next time in the disputed Himalayan region and urged both sides to expand the proposed bus service across the LOC to include other local destinations. In a statement, he said that President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had taken important steps to bring peace to the region, including the resumption of the bus link between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar from April 7.

“These steps have been welcomed for their humanitarian content. Now the time is ripe for further steps on the political front,” Mirwaiz told Dawnby telephone from Srinagar.

He urged the leaders to restore telecommunications links between the two sides of the divided region to allow their people to communicate with each other. “This is an essential requirement for Kashmir as it is for any part of India or Pakistan in the 21st century.”

The statement was overshadowed by news reports that armed militants resisting Indian rule in Kashmir would try to target the bus.

“We have intercepted wireless messages between some militant outfits planning to sabotage the peace process between the two countries by targeting the first Muzaffarabad-bound bus,” a top Indian army officer was quoted by the a news service as saying.

Some factions of the Kashmir resistance, led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, have opposed the bus service, saying it would dilute the quest for a political solution of the Kashmir question.