ISLAMABAD, May 20: President Pervez Musharraf said on Friday that Pakistan and India must seize a ‘fleeting moment’ available to them to solve their disputes and a possible solution of the Kashmir dispute could make borders irrelevant. In a speech to parliamentarians from South Asian countries at the end of a six-day conference, he said India-Pakistan disputes should better be settled during his and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s tenures because of a ‘complete understanding’ existing between them.

President Musharraf said he felt ‘extremely optimistic’ about the future of peace process after his talks with the Indian leadership during a visit to New Delhi last month, because of sincerity of intentions between the two sides.

“I feel optimistic about it because more than joint declarations or joint statements, what is important is intentions,” he said, adding that no amount of joint declarations or joint statement could bear fruit without sincerity.

He said it might have been because of lack of noble intentions, or designs to push disputes under the carpet or leadership changes that “too many resolutions, joint declarations and joint statements...had resulted in more conflicts and eruption on the border” and two sides failed to “reach an ultimate peace and harmony” between them.

The president said he believed now was the time of conflict-resolution and ‘not of conflict-management’ and added: “Such fleeting moments in history are not available every time. They come and go.” “Now is the moment that (that) fleeting moment is there,” he said. “This is a period of historic achievement available to the leadership of India and Pakistan.”

He cited five reasons which he said made the present time conducive for a resolution of India-Pakistan disputes, including what he called a world realization of the necessity to resolve political disputes that were the root cause of militancy and extremism all over the world and South Asia becoming a nuclear flashpoint after the 1998 tit-for-tat nuclear tests by the two countries.

The president said the two sides had tried military solutions “many times before” and now they ought to realize that force was no option.

Amid cheers from the delegates to the first-ever South Asian parliamentary conference organized by the South Asian Free Media Association (Safma), the president said he believed the peace process had become irreversible because the people of India and Pakistan wanted peace and harmony and had “overtaken their leaders and the governments”.

“And lastly may I say that the credit goes to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and myself that we have an understanding, we have harmony, we have complete understanding between ourselves,” he said. “This I think is a very big difference between now and the past,” he added.

“Therefore I believe that this is a fleeting moment which we must seize for the sake of the future of South Asia, especially for the future of India and Pakistan,” he said. Apparently in deference to India’s reservations about the matter, the president avoided talking of a specific timeframe for a settlement of the 57-year-old Kashmir dispute.

But he said: “When we talk of moments, we think a moment is related to time... certainly one has in mind what is time dependent on, what is this fleeting moment.”

“I personally feel it must be done within the tenure or the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and myself,” he said.

“I may be talking big, but it is the reality. Therefore, I leave it to each one of you to work out the time.” President Musharraf’s present term of office expires in 2007, while Mr Singh’s five-year term runs out in the middle of 2009.

President Musharraf said he had referred to an Urdu proverb meaning that it needs two hands to clap during his meeting with Mr Singh and added: “The hand of Pakistan is available.” He said a far greater courage was required to reconcile and compromise than to fight and asked the South Asia media to facilitate the solution of the Kashmir dispute by discussing available options.

KASHMIR SOLUTION: Asked what kind of solution to the Kashmir dispute he had in mind, the president said: “I think there is a solution. I am convinced and I know there is that solution. It ought to be acceptable to India, to Pakistan and to the Kashmiri people.”

He cited what he called contradictory statements coming from the two countries like Indian leaders ruling out the redrawing of boundaries, Pakistan saying the Line of Control could never be accepted as an international border and some saying boundaries should be made irrelevant.

“I think a solution lies somewhere in compromise of these three (assertions) and in fact it lies in the third statement — boundaries becoming irrelevant,” he said in what appeared to be the clearest preference for an option by Pakistan, which in the past had consistently called for a UN-mandated plebiscite to determine whether Kashmiris want to join Pakistan or India.

“I know Kashmiris want to govern themselves,” he said. “So there is an element of self-governance involved which we must allow to the people Kashmir.” The other element, he said, was the presence of military in Kashmir, especially on the Indian side. “That needs to be stopped but at the same time atrocities and the human rights violations, which are incidental to the presence of a large force, need to be resolved.... so the main issue is demilitarization.”

In what seemed to be a restatement of his controversial ideas voiced last year about identification of Kashmir in various regions while seeking a solution, the president said a third element was how to define the territory – “which territory we are talking of, we need to identify that”.

He said Pakistan understood India’s sensibility about its secular credentials and, therefore, such an identification might not be on religious basis. “So, therefore, it needs to be on regional basis, on the people’s basis, to identify the region, allow maximum... self-governance to the people, demilitarize and take some actions to make the borders irrelevant.”

He acknowledged he might have created a bit of confusion by his observations but said “the views I have in mind are not as confused as I have spoken. These are very concrete.”

The president said a resolution of India-Pakistan disputes would open up vast socio-economic opportunities for the two countries and the South Asian region as a whole.

MEDIA MOVEMENT: He renewed an earlier assurance given to Safma to allow free movement of journalists from Saarc, including India, to all parts of Pakistan and promised he would issue necessary instructions to the interior ministry, as was suggested to him by Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri who was present.

“As far as I am concerned, I have no problem (about) media personalities coming into Pakistan...to interact with any person, as many as possible.” But he said the media should avoid creating misperceptions and referred to what he called an unchecked report in the US magazine Newsweek about alleged desecration of the holy Quran that sparked widespread protests in the Muslim world, some of them resulting in deaths.

He complained about press criticism about US arms sales to Pakistan while much bigger arms sales had been agreed with India and said: “The media should be more discreet and more responsible in their reporting.” The president described the South Asian parliamentary conference as a timely initiative at a time when Saarc was moving forward after the signing of the South Asian Free Trade Area (Safta) agreement last year.