ISLAMABAD, Jan 18: President General Pervez Musharraf has urged India to help start a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad and revive the pre-1953 position by allowing travel with the permission of a deputy commissioner.

"The president told us that this travel could also be made possible through domicile under a domicile act, with a view to improving relations between the two countries," Prof Nazir Ahmad Shawl, executive director of the Kashmir Centre, London, said here on Tuesday.

The president was of the view that the deputy commissioner concerned should issue a slip allowing travel between the two cities. Taking to Dawn, Mr Shawl, who met the president on Sunday along with two other Kashmir leaders, one based in London and the other in Brussels, said the president had rejected travel across the Line of Control on passport or any other similar documents.

"We endorse the president's view that Kashmiris of both the sides should get permission from deputy commissioners in Srinagar and Muzaffarabad to travel across the LoC," he said.

He said the president had told them that Pakistan had not given up its stand that the issue of Kashmir should be resolved on the basis of the United Nations resolutions. "We are only saying that if India shows flexibility we would also be ready to move forward to settle the 57-year-old Kashmir dispute," he quoted the president as having said.

Mr Shawl said the president had regretted that there was no 'substantial progress' in talks with India to resolve the Kashmir problem. "The president said he is hopeful that relations between the two countries would improve but he maintained that if things did not move forward then India should be blamed for derailing the peace process," Mr Shawl said.

The process of composite dialogue had been started with the hope that there would be progress on Kashmir and there would be durable peace in the region, he quoted President Musharraf as saying.

He said the president had also told them that the international community today attached great importance to the ongoing peace process and that US President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were taking active interest to help resolve all outstanding issues between India and Pakistan.

Responding to a question, Mr Shawl said the Kashmiri leaders had expressed concern over India's continued human rights violations in occupied Kashmir despite the fact that a number of confidence-building measures had been taken by the two sides.

"The president said that the ongoing human rights violations, killing of innocent people and incidents of rape in occupied Kashmir are a cause of concern for every Pakistani," Mr Shawl said.

He said they had told the president that India had not reduced the number of troops in occupied Kashmir. "In fact it's not a reduction in forces by India rather it's a rotation under which more troops are being sent to the Valley every now and then."

There was no reduction in the level of atrocities by the Indian army on Kashmiris, he maintained. He said the Kashmiri leaders told the president that former Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was more serious than the present Indian leadership in resolving the Kashmir dispute.