President Pervez Musharraf said Monday he was very hopeful that the decades-old Kashmir dispute with India can be resolved. "I am very hopeful. The most important thing is for the leadership to have the will to reach a conclusion and I see that at this moment the leadership does have the desire and the will," he told reporters on a stopover en route to Australia.
"Therefore I am optimistic that it will be resolved in a certain time frame," he said, according to the national Bernama news agency.
Musharraf said he would "love to go" to occupied Kashmir but that the time was not right to propose a visit. "Let's see how things develop," he added.
The president also defended the decision to deport top al Qaeda operative Abu Faraj al-Libbi to the United States after his arrest in May, saying it was an important move for the international fight on terror.
"If you can do much more to get to the roots of al Qaeda, to apprehend more people around the world through the interrogation of this one man, I think that is more important than trying him (in Pakistan)," he said.
"Trying him will come later and we'll think about that later," he said of the man who allegedly masterminded two assassination attempts against him in December 2003.
"Other than the charges against him ... what is more important is to corroborate all the intelligence and information we get from arresting or apprehending other terrorists."
There were hopes that Al-Libbi's capture would help in the hunt for al Qaeda supremo Osama bin Laden, but Musharraf has reportedly said that the arrest failed to yield any clues to his whereabouts.
The President's delegation includes Minister for Industries Jehangir Tareen, Higher Education Commission Chairman Dr Attaur Rehman, Export Promotion Bureau Chairman Tariq Ikram, Foreign Secretary Riaz M. Khan and Information Secretary Shahid Rafi.
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