LONDON, July 11: Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri has said that early involvement of Kashmiris in the current talks between Pakistan and India will be better for all parties concerned.

"The quicker you involve them in the peace process the better it will be for India and Pakistan and of course the Kashmiris," he told APP on Saturday before his departure for Islamabad after a few hours' transit here while on his way back to Islamabad from Moscow.

He said the Indian Government was now talking to All Parties' Hurriyat Conference leaders. "Given their higher stakes, Kashmiris are likely to be far more responsible in providing a solution that will be acceptable both to Pakistan and India and of course to themselves," the foreign minister said.

A durable peace in South Asia was not possible without a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir issue, he said. "The whole purpose of this exercise is to have durable peace," he said while referring to the composite dialogue between the two countries.

In reply to a question as to what had made the current dialogue different from such endeavours in the past, Mr Kasuri said he was optimistic as talks were very useful in the foreign policy.

Mr Kasuri referred to the Jan 6 2004 statement and said the language used by the Indian Government on the issue of Kashmir was different from what it had been using in the past.

He said when President Gen Pervez Musharraf went to Aagra for a summit with the then Indian Prime Minister Atar Behari Vajpayee in 2001, he was the first leader in South Asia who had the courage and the vision to say that both parties "will have to show flexibility and to move away from their stated positions on Kashmir."

"It is quite evident, it cannot just be one-sided. Pakistan alone cannot show flexibility if there is to be a lasting solution to the problem of Jammu and Kashmir," the foreign minister said.

"Even if a child in a street either in Tamil Nadu or in tribal areas of Pakistan is asked about the cause of wars between Pakistan and India, the response will be that they were fought over the issue of Kashmir," the foreign minister said.

When asked what was pressing Islamabad and New Delhi to pursue the talks, he said there was a strong public opinion in both countries who wanted both Pakistan and India to resolve all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir.

The second thing was that unlike the past, both Pakistan and India were now nuclear powers and possessed missiles, adding in other words they had the capacity to inflict unimaginable destruction on each other.

Thirdly, he said, the international community was now engaged in South Asia and wherever he went across the globe, the peace talks were appreciated by the international community.

He said former US President Bill Clinton had described the Kashmir as the most dangerous place on earth. The former French minister had recently referred to Palestine and Kashmir as two flash points in the world.

During the G-8 meeting, Pakistan and India were urged to resolve their outstanding issues. Then there were UN resolutions after 1998 nuclear tests carried out by both Pakistan and India. Hence all these factors were important in this regard, he said.

He said the people both in Pakistan and India had realized that their countries had been far ahead of other countries like Africa, Asia and Latin America in the past. For example in the 1960's the value of the manufactured exports of Pakistan was greater than the combined manufactured exports of South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. India was far ahead of any other country. India attracted US$ 3 billion foreign direct investment last year, China US$ 57 billion while Pakistan got US$1 billion direct foreign investment.

"So I think both the countries have seen that they are being overtaken by all other regions in the world, so all this has created new factors which have encouraged the emergence of peace lobbies in both India and Pakistan," the foreign minister said.

In reply to a question, Mr Kasuri said the recent success of Pakistan's foreign policy was self-evident as the US had granted Pakistan a major non-NATO ally status.

He said despite all opposition Pakistan had managed to upgrade its relations with the European Union and inked the Third Generation Agreement with it after a gap of eight years. -APP