Pakistan seeks 'new beginning' with India

Pakistan's military ruler is upbeat about landmark talks with India

By staff and wire reports

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf has said he hopes to change history and make a "new beginning" with India at a summit next month.

The summit is the first in more than two years after the nuclear foes came to the brink of a war.

In a surprise move last month, India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee invited Musharraf to visit New Delhi to discuss disputes between their countries.

Speaking on state television on Friday night, Musharraf said the long-festering dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir had to be the main issue at the talks, expected some time in July.

Vajpayee has acknowledged there had been little progress in the past toward resolving the Kashmir row, over which the Indian and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

Region

While Musharraf admitted the two foes have not moved forward on major issues in the past, he said he was optimistic about the talks and would go to the meeting with an open mind.

He urged the Indian leadership to show the same spirit.

Musharraf repeated Pakistan's position that Kashmir was the "core issue" between the neighbors and said "chances of moving forward have been never been brighter than they are now."

"I am sure my counterparts in India -- the Indian leadership, the Indian government -- will also show open-mindedness, and this time we will change history.

Date

No dates for Musharraf's visit have been set.

A Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday the summit would be held shortly after Vajpayee recovered from recent knee surgery, and that Kashmir would be the main talking point.

Vajpayee, 74, successfully underwent a second knee replacement operation at a private hospital in Bombay on June 7.

Indian officials said he was expected to stay there for 10 days.

Both countries have urged the creation of a positive atmosphere for the first Vajpayee-Musharraf summit and the first since border fighting in the summer 1999.

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1999 and has promised a return to democracy by October 2002.

India rules about 45 percent of Kashmir, where it is fighting an 11-year-old insurgency by Muslim militants seeking independence or union with Pakistan.

Pakistan controls just over a third of the region and the remainder is held by China.

'Regrettable'

Even as he remained upbeat, Musharraf dismissed as "regrettable" Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh's statement after Vajpayee's invitation that the whole of Kashmir was part of India.

"In my view we will not be able to move forward like this," Musharraf said, adding that he hoped New Delhi would not press that view as the basis of the coming dialogue.

Officials say more than 30,000 people have been killed in separatist violence since the revolt began at the end of 1989 in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.