Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf sees a “simple” solution to his country’s long dispute with India over Kashmir: New Delhi should pull troops out of the Himalayan territory and agree to a compromise over its status. The Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since a war which followed independence from Britain in 1947.

New Delhi controls the heart of Kashmir, the mainly Muslim Kashmir Valley, and considers all of the state as an integral part of the country. Pakistan has always wanted a referendum to allow Kashmiris to choose which country to join. Musharraf said both sides needed to step back from these “maximalist” positions, but could find a solution in just a day if they really wanted to.

“It is simple – identify the region, demilitarise it and change its status,” he told India’s Asian Age newspaper in an interview published yesterday. Last year, Musharraf told Reuters he could set aside Pakistan’s demand for a referendum and meet India half-way. At that time he also suggested Pakistan was not really interested in the mainly Hindu Jammu region or Buddhist Ladakh, but only in the central Kashmir valley, the heart of a 15-year insurgency against Indian rule.

Some academics have suggested a solution based on joint Indian and Pakistani sovereignty of a largely autonomous Kashmir Valley, with India retaining full control of Jammu and Ladakh. But that is a proposal which India’s government and people refuse to countenance. Instead many in India favour a compromise based on drawing a permanent border along the current ceasefire line dividing the armies in Kashmir, and perhaps offering Kashmiris limited autonomy on the Indian side. “We are at present on a maximalist course: if there has to be an agreement, both sides have to step down,” he said. “I am a realist not an idealist and I know that Pakistan cannot dictate terms to India, and also that there can be no military solution,” said Musharraf.

<B>Ray of light</B>

“India must also realise that it cannot dictate terms or humiliate Pakistan, and that there can be no military solution.” Musharraf said he came away from last month’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York with renewed hope.

“The body language was very good,” he said. For the first time since Singh’s Congress party came to power in May, “I can see a ray of light at the end of the tunnel,” he added. But he also expressed frustration that the nuclear-armed neighbours had not made faster progress in talks this year.

“Why should the next meeting be after six months when there is no reason? We should keep meeting and take the process forward,” he said. “How many times can we keep discussing options – once, twice, four times, six times, how much more can one discuss?”

The South Asian heavyweights have gradually mended relations since coming close to war in 2002 after an attack on the Indian parliament which New Delhi blamed on Pakistani-backed militants. Optimism rose in January when Musharraf appeared to strike up an unlikely rapport with India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

But when Vajpayee lost power to the centre-left Congress party in May, some observers felt the chance for peace might slip away, with Singh’s coalition too weak, and too vulnerable to attacks from the right, to compromise over Kashmir.

AL QAEDA-LINKED MILITANTS

<B>Tribesmen fail to secure release of Chinese hostages </B>

■ A delegation of tribesmen met the head of a group of al Qaeda-linked militants holding two Chinese engineers hostage in Pakistan, but failed to secure their release, a member of the delegation said yesterday. In the Tuesday night talks, kidnap leader Abdullah Mehsud offered to free one of two Pakistanis held with engineers Wang Ende and Wang Peng since Saturday in the remote South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan. But Abdullah, a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who is in a separate location from the kidnappers, insisted he would not order the freeing of the Chinese until his demands were met, said the source, who did not want to be identified. “He did not spell out the demands, but repeated a demand for safe passage for both captors and the captives to join him.” A council of the Mehsud tribe to which Abdullah belongs and which dispatched the delegation met yesterday in the town of Tank near South Waziristan to consider its response, he said. Pakistani officials have said Abdullah has demanded an end to military operations in the semi-autonomous tribal region, where hundreds have died this year in battles between troops and al Qaeda-linked militants, and the freeing of two Uzbek militants. The kidnappers, with explosives strapped to their bodies, have been holed up in a mud house surrounded by security forces and their tribal allies in the Chagmalai area of South Waziristan, about 330 km (200 miles) southwest of Islamabad. Officials said there were four or five kidnappers, at least two of whom appeared to be Arabs.