WASHINGTON, Sept 23: President Pervez Musharraf has said that he wants the India-Pakistan dialogue to be raised to summit level. “While the ministerial-level and secretary-level talks must continue, I believe that they have run their course because there have been so many meetings,” he told a forum at the George Washington University on Friday. “So it is time that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and I sit down and reach decisions and solutions.”
Gen Musharraf said he had a wonderful meeting with Mr Singh in Havana last week and described the Indian prime minister as ‘a very positive and very sincere person.’ “If Mr Singh comes to Pakistan, we will try to move this process forward.”
Prime Minister Singh has accepted President Musharraf’s invitation but no date has yet been announced.
The president said that the joint statement Mr Singh and he issued after their Havana meeting ‘has seeds of success and forward movement.’
“This was so because I always believe that one should not, never suffer from paralysis through analysis,” he said, quoting former US president Richard Nixon in his book on the leader.
Gen Musharraf warned that certain groups were bent on derailing the peace process but said that there was ‘a resolve on both sides to move the process forward.’
The groups, he said, ‘have rigid positions’ and ‘don’t want to move the peace process forward.”
“People of both the countries want peace and want us to succeed in resolving our disputes, and therefore, it is up to the leadership to make sure that they get resolved,” he said.
As the two countries are going to resume talks, Gen Musharraf said he believed that the talks should never break down due to any terrorist activity because the aim and objective of all terrorists was to make sure that the talks failed.
“So we’ll be playing into their hands if we are to allow the failure of talks because of these actions,” he said in an apparent reference to New Delhi calling off foreign the secretary-level talks after the Mumbai train bombings.
He also appealed to the people of both countries to show understanding and flexibility and give support to their leaders in their search for peace.
TERRORISM: President Pervez Musharraf said that his country was committed to fighting terrorism, adds PPI.
He said that Pakistan would fight terrorism for its own good, but also for the good of the world and the region.
President Musharraf said that Pakistan was determined to fight against terrorism, whether it was by the Taliban, Al Qaida or any other group.
“Pakistan is together (with everyone) to fight terrorism and extremism in all its complexity,” he said. “Maybe people need to learn from us: what we are doing and how we are doing it and what is the strategy.”
He said that more than one strategy was needed for dealing with terrorism’s different components, particularly extremist ideology.
“Extremism is a totally different thing, it is a mindset. Extremism feeds terrorism,” he added.
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