KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 24: Pakistan said on Sunday that the time was ripe for progress on Kashmir, cause of two wars with neighbour India, and hoped for quick agreement on starting a bus link between the two halves of the disputed territory.

Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri said the planned bus route, between held Kashmir and Azad Kashmir, was a crucial step in efforts to resolve the 56-year-old conflict between two nuclear-armed states.

"The time has now come when the leadership should be prepared to go forward with this and it would be a great pity if this opportunity were missed," he told Reuters during a visit to Malaysia.

Mr Kasuri said he hoped Pakistani and Indian officials could overcome the main stumbling block - which documents Kashmiris would need for travel across their divided homeland - before foreign ministers meet late this year.

He said the start of a bus service, promising to reunite divided families, would be in some ways the most important of a series of "confidence-building" measures being discussed between Pakistan and India.

India, which considers Kashmir an integral part of its territory, wants people travelling from its part of the region to carry Indian passports. Pakistan has proposed travel with UN documents.

The foreign minister said Kashmiris on both sides of the region's heavily armed Line of Control (LoC) border did not want to use passports and visas but might be prepared to use another form of documentation. "I don't see why it poses a problem," he said.

HUNT FOR OSAMA: The foreign minister expressed doubt about US intelligence that Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was hiding out in tribal areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border.-Reuters