IHK Chief Minister Omar Abdullah met former President General Pervez Musharraf (retd) on the sidelines of the Hindustan Times leadership Summit at New Delhi on Saturday. Sources, present at the Summit in New Delhi said that the two leaders held a 40-minute long one-to-one meeting in a room after the two spoke during the Summit.
According to the sources, Omar Abdullah urged the former Pakistan President to exercise his personal influence in Pakistan for bringing the two countries closer.
"Omar told Musharraf that he was also ready to extend support for making efforts to bridge the divide between the two countries in a constructive manner. He also laid stress on importance of friendship between the countries apart from people to people contacts," the sources added. The two leaders spoke on wide range of issues apart from exchanging ideas over many issues including possible solution of the Kashmir issue, the sources said.
At the Hindustan Times summit asked how much of his four-point programme on Kashmir was accepted by both AB Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh governments, Musharraf said there was "wide agreement".
His formula included gradual demilitarisation along the Line of Control, maximum self governance to the two halves of Kashmir, making LoC irrelevant by opening as many routes along the border as possible and working on an over-watch mechanism.
"With Vajpayee Sahib, it was not a resolution of the dispute. It was a joint resolution that we were drafting accepting the realities of the disputes between India and Pakistan."
He said the agreement was supposed to be for 15 or 20 years. "To be tried out and then readjusted after that final tuning of whatever has gone right or wrong...So, I think that is the way forward," he said noting that no one he has ever spoken to, both in Kashmir and any other place, have been able to give a solution to the Kashmir.