ISLAMABAD, Aug 12: President General Pervez Musharraf has offered to facilitate a ceasefire inside occupied Kashmir if India reduces its troops in the territory, stops atrocities against innocent Kashmiris and allows political activities and free travel.

The president, who was interacting with the visiting Indian delegation of parliamentarians and senior editors and writers here on Tuesday at the Aiwan-i-Sadr, agreed with one of the Indian parliamentarians belonging to held Kashmir that the people of Kashmir had suffered a lot over the last so many years and therefore needed a respite while India and Pakistan sorted out their problems over Kashmir.

The president called for a ceasefire on a reciprocal basis inside occupied Kashmir during the intervening period as India and Pakistan took to its logical conclusion the ongoing peace process which, he said, was yet to start at the official level.

He said a ceasefire could be established on the LoC immediately with the two governments ordered their troops to stop firing at each other, but “what is happening inside occupied Kashmir is not under our control, it is not possible to stop it from here because we do not have a whistle which we can blow from here and things start happening in Indian-held Kashmir.”

The president maintained that violent incidents taking place in occupied Kashmir could only be stopped completely if a ceasefire was established on a reciprocal basis.

Answering a query, Gen Musharraf said there was no government-sponsored terrorism on the LoC or across the LoC. “Whatever is happening in Kashmir is a freedom struggle.”

He said no one should assume that since elections had been held in occupied Kashmir and a government opposed to the last one was in the saddle there was, therefore, no Kashmir crisis.

He said on its part Pakistan and he himself would like to see increased people-to-people interaction between the two countries, and would like to welcome more such delegations from India, but despite a lot of talk about the peace process, no official-level talks had so far been held between Islamabad and New Delhi.

The president said there was a suspicion in Pakistan that all this talk about peace process was nothing more than an eyewash and that India had no intention of talking to Pakistan on substantive issues.

He expressed the hope that India would soon agree to at least a foreign secretary-level meeting so that the peace process would get going in right earnest.

He said any delay in the start of official talks would strengthen the hands of extremist elements who might not be in favour of a dialogue process.

President Musharraf said it was unrealistic to expect two countries, one bigger and more powerful and the other smaller and weaker, to sit across the table and resolve their disputes bilaterally.

In this context, he urged India to show magnanimity while dealing with Pakistan as according to him when a bigger and more powerful country concedes something to a smaller and weaker country, it is regarded as a magnanimous gesture while such gestures on the part of the latter would be considered as a show of weakness.

Still, he did not appear to be ruling out completely the possibility of using bilateral negotiations for resolving the Kashmir issue.

Gen Musharraf recalled that at Agra he had stated clearly that Pakistan on its part was prepared to go beyond its historically stated position and said the offer was still open and in fact according to him the need of the hour was to look forward and not to go back into history except to learn lessons from past mistakes.

He said it was India which had become a stumbling block in the way of Saarc graduating into a truly vibrant economic bloc and again it was India which had stopped overflights. Pakistan wanted to clear these hurdles and move ahead, but without official-level talks all this, he explained, was not possible.

He reiterated his proposal for amending the Saarc charter to include in it a mechanism for collective issue resolution.

When he was asked to lift the ban in Pakistan on Indian TV programmes, the president said the media of the two countries indulged in vicious propaganda against each other and unless that was stopped, he thought such a move would only prove to be counterproductive.

He referred to a report in an Indian magazine which had alleged that the Gwadar port would serve as a Chinese naval base, and categorically refuted it.

He said he was not averse to free movement of media persons between the two countries but asked: “How many of our journalists have been allowed to interview Indian leaders? I have on my part rarely refused to give interviews to Indian journalists.”

In his opening remarks, the president said India and Pakistan should address all issues with sincerity of purpose for the betterment of their people.

“We want peace and I want peace. We do not want war. We have had enough of war. We are looking for peace through a process of dialogue, as civilized nations which we both are.”

He assured the Indian parliamentarians that they would not find sincerity lacking in Pakistan.

“We want peace and Pakistan will not be lagging behind in initiatives for peace.”