ISLAMABAD, Jan 9: President Gen Pervez Musharraf has assured the Kashmiri leadership that the Line of Control (LoC) will not be accepted as an international border as being advocated by some Indian quarters.

"We have neither accepted the idea of making the LoC a permanent border before nor is there any question of accepting it in the future talks with India," the president was quoted as having said on Thursday during his two-hour meeting with the Kashmiri leaders.

Gen Musharraf said that international players involved in facilitating the Pakistan-India talks had been told in "unequivocal terms" that Islamabad should not be expected to even consider making the ceasefire line as a permanent border, what to talk of accepting it.

A source, who attended the meeting, said that former president of Azad Kashmir Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan told Gen Musharraf that once the late prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was advised by one of his important ministers during a cabinet meeting that Pakistan "should accept" LoC as a permanent border to improve relations with India. However, the late Bhutto rejected the proposal out of hand, saying this will be a betrayal to the cause of the Kashmiris, and that he could never think of it.

The president, the source said, fully concurred with this stance and told Sardar Qayyum that any formula which did not reflect the aspirations of the Kashmiris will not be accepted.

The president said that a "step-by-step approach" will be adopted during the next, what he termed, "three crucial foreign-secretary level rounds of talks" between the two countries.

The president was quoted as having said that in the run-up to the proposed composite talks in February, different groups will be set up at the lower level to discuss matters pertaining to trade, people-to-people contact, etc.

"The president told us that it will be a re-enactment of the Lahore process," another source said, who also attended the meeting. He said during the meeting no solution of the Kashmir problem came up and the participants were told that let both sides first make up their mind over the issue.

"I think there will be a geographic division, and not one on religious lines, to resolve the Kashmir issue," he said. He also quoted the president as having said that during the second round of composite dialogue, the question of reducing Indian troops in the occupied Kashmir, which number 700,000, will be addressed with a view to minimizing gross human rights violations in the valley. "And if that does not happen then there would be no point in holding talks, and also it would become difficult to start the bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad," the president was quoted as having said.

The source also said that it was proposed by Mr Farooq Khatiani of the American study group that prior to the resolution of Kashmir problem, new parliaments in Azad Kashmir and the occupied Kashmir be elected, to be followed by a joint parliament which should be overseen by both the countries.

The president told the Kashmiri leaders that both sides "have their compulsions" to sort out the Kashmir dispute and that it could no more be ignored or put into the cold storage.

"We were told that Indian investors were putting lot of pressure on the Indian government to look for a Kashmir solution as it was hurting their business and commercial interest," the source said.

He said that he recently met an important British diplomat who told him that it had been decided by the international players to resolve the Kashmir dispute through a step-by-step approach.

The diplomat said that confidence building measures (CBMs), people-to-people contacts and Track-II diplomacy were part of the planned move.