NEW DELHI, Feb 13: Indian External Affairs Minister Kunwar Natwar Singh, under pressure at home and abroad to produce a foreign policy that works with neighbours , is expected to bring good tidings to Islamabad this week on the tangled though symbolic issue of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service, official sources said on Sunday.

They said there was a good possibility that Mr Singh would agree to a previously misunderstood proposal by his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri to accept local documents, on the model of the pre-1953 'rahdari' permits, to allow Kashmiris to travel across the Line of Control between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar.

India has been recently insisting on the use of passports as a basic identity document, while also signalling the requirement for simultaneous use of the traditional permits, issued in the past by local authorities on both sides of the LoC.

Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front Chairman Yasin Malik welcomed the proposal on Sunday, saying any move to enable travel between the two sides of the divided region would be boon for the region. "This should not be construed as suggesting that everything else was Okay," he cautioned.

He said even if people travelled and met their separated families, "Kashmiris still had to be invited to the dialogue table by India and Pakistan to resolve the main issue of our struggle".

The Hindu newspaper said that an agreement on the bus service will, 'in all likelihood', be signed when Mr Singh visits Pakistan from Feb 15 to 17. It would be the first 'purely bilateral' visit by an Indian foreign minister since P.V. Narasimha Rao's visit in 1989.

The Indian cabinet recently authorized the petroleum ministry to begin negotiations with Pakistan, Iran and Turkmenistan for the proposed gas pipelines to India. This is being seen as a major fillip to the long-pending project.

About the earlier obstructions to the bus service, The Hindu recalled the stand off during the Dec 7-8 technical talks on the issue "after Pakistan insisted that the passengers use only a local document and not passports". India had suggested that commuters carry an entry permit with the passport serving as an identity document.

Describing New Delhi's fresh thinking on the matter as a logical step, The Hindu said: "Now, it appears that the logical next step could be to work out a compromise in advance and an accord to get the bus service up and running. Pakistan has time and again emphasised that it will do nothing that transforms the LoC into an international border."

India has been under considerable pressure to mend fences with its neighbours since the royal coup in Nepal and the subsequent cancellation of the Dhaka summit, prompted by New Delhi's decision to stay away, drove a diplomatic wedge with both.

Mr Singh would also call on President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. He is scheduled to travel to Lahore on Feb 17. Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Aziz Khan's presence in Islamabad ahead of the rare talks has lent urgency to the Indian foreign minister's visit.

Mr Khan's inputs on the general mood and thinking in New Delhi on the on-going India-Pakistan peace process and confidence-building measures, particularly the proposed Trans-Pakistan gas pipeline and Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service, will determine the course.