India offers a treaty of peace, security and friendship to Pakistan
Dated 24/3/2006
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Amritsar: Indian PM Manmohan Singh has launched a fresh initiative in the Indo-Pakistan peace-process while inaugurating a new bus service between the two countries.
He praised President Pervez Musharraf for taking steps to curb terrorism and offered Islamabad a treaty of peace, security and friendship.
The new bus service connects Sikhism's two holiest sites, Amritsar in India and Nankana Sahib in Pakistan.
The two sides have been engaged in a peace process since January 2004.
This was a clear attempt by the Indian Prime Minister to breathe new life into what has been in danger of becoming a moribund peace process.
'Hard-nosed realism'
Prime Minister Singh raised the possibility of a treaty between Delhi and Islamabad forging peace, security and friendship.
He personally praised President Pervez Musharraf for taking concrete steps to curb what he called terrorism and extremism.
But he also injected a note of hard-nosed realism by stating that a solution to the problem of Kashmir had to be based on ground realities.
"We are not afraid of discussing Jammu and Kashmir or of finding pragmatic, practical solutions to resolve this issue as well."
He said that borders between the two sides could not be redrawn, but they could be made "irrelevant".
"I have often said that borders cannot be redrawn but we can work towards making them irrelevant - towards making them just lines on a map," he said.
The speech was perhaps just as important for its symbolism as its substance.
It was delivered in the Punjab, the great fault line of India and Pakistan's partition in 1947.
The prime minister, who was born in what is now Pakistan, spoke in his native tongue of Punjabi which lent more emotion to his speech.
Pakistan has long complained that India simply wants to maintain the status quo in divided Kashmir and that the pace of the peace-process is far too slow.
This speech could pave the way for a prime ministerial visit to Pakistan sometime over the next few months.
