By IANS,
Jammu : Terming the meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari “a good beginning”, patron of Jammu and Kashmir’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Mufti Mohammad Sayeed Saturday hoped that this “positive development” would help in finding pragmatic solutions to a number of issues affecting the relationship between the two countries.
“Today’s meeting between the prime minister of India and the Pakistani president is not a coincidence but a positive development to further improve relations between the two countries,” Sayeed said while addressing a public meeting at Ranbir Singh Pura on the international border in the Jammu region.
Sayeed hoped that the meeting would yield substantive results and the process started Saturday would be taken to its logical conclusion.
He also urged Manmohan Singh to visit Pakistan soon to carry forward the “process of peace and reconciliation.”
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was the last Indian prime minister to visit Pakistan in 2004, to attend the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Thereafter, no other prime minister has visited Pakistan, though the leadership in Islamabad has regularly invited the Indian Prime Minister to visit Pakistan.
Mufti Sayeed said the prime minister’s visit would be a “good will gesture that would set up trust between the two countries.”
He added that cordial relations between India and Pakistan were in the interest of the common people of both the countries.
He observed that in “the prevailing circumstances, it was a good opportunity to take some bold initiatives to solve all the contentious issues.”