In an exclusive television interview to Zee News, Gen Pervez Musharraf asked Prime Minister Vajpayee to let Hurriyat leaders meet him during his India visit. He said that the summit talks would remain incomplete without the Hurriyat’s involvement. Musharraf said that the main issue during the talks would be Kashmir and that he was willing to take up any other issue in the remaining time. He added that he would request the Indian PM to include them at some stage or the other.

He, however, insisted that any solution to the Kashmir issue must be acceptable to India and Pakistan and emphatically involve the wishes of the Kashmiri people. This, he said called for a practical approach. The search for a solution must be future oriented. It must not be bogged down in history.
On reining in fundamentalists, Musharraf said that he had followed up his rebuke to them by initiating a process of deweaponisation. He had banned the display of weapons and had asked people to surrender unauthorised weapons. Bureau Report