Pak ready to meet midway on Kashmir: President
Monitoring Report

ISLAMABAD—Pakistan is prepared to give up its claim on Kashmir, the demand for plebiscite in the region and on implementation of UN resolutions if both countries agree on the four-point solution.
In an interview to an Indain news channel, President Pervez Musharraf said self-governance or autonomy did not mean independence and Pakistan is against independence for Kashmir. He said Pakistan was prepared to give up its claim to Kashmir if India and Pakistan agrees on the four-point solution (a solution in which boundaries are not changed and India does not have to give up any territory).
“We will have to. Yes, if this solution comes up,” he said when asked if he was prepared to give up claim to Kashmir. “We are on the same position as we were since 1948. But we both...I am saying we both ought to be prepared to give up all that we have been saying. And this includes all this...If we reach an agreement where we are giving self governance, yes indeed, we...That is it...”
President Musharraf also made it clear that if the four-point solution, which includes no change in boundaries of Kashmir, making borders and the loc irrelevant, staggered demilitarisation and autonomy or self-governance with a joint supervision mechanism, is agreed upon, Pakistan would also give up on the UN resolutions and its long-standing demand for a plebiscite.
He said when both sides are negotiating, it meant compromise and compromise could never take place without stepping back. So inherently, both sides would have to give up their positions and step back. The Pakistan President made it clear once Pakistan gave up its claim to Kashmir, this four-point solution was not a negotiating step towards getting independence for Kashmir and that self-governance or autonomy was not the first step to Kashmir’s independence. “Yes, we are against independence....” he said when asked whether he meant no independence for Kashmir.
Pakistan would give up its claim to Kashmir if India agreed to give the disputed Himalayan territory autonomy under the joint supervision of both countries, President Pervez Musharraf has said. India did not respond directly to the proposal, which Musharraf has floated several times in the past, but said it could be discussed as part of a slow-moving peace process.
In an interview with Indian news channel NDTV, Musharraf reiterated a phased plan to solve the decades-old dispute over Kashmir, proposals he also spelled out in his recent memoirs “In the Line of Fire”. Asked if Pakistan would give up its claim to Kashmir if India agreed to implement this plan, Musharraf said: “We will have to ... Yes ... If this solution comes up,” according to a statement from NDTV.
“I’m not giving up ... at all ... but one is prepared to give up, in case India leaves its stated position also,” he added later when pressed. First, Musharraf wants India and Pakistan to focus on the parts of the former princely state of Kashmir that are genuinely disputed by both sides, according to details of a plan he has discussed in the past.
For example, Pakistan might give up any claim to the mainly Hindu Jammu region and the largely Buddhist region of Ladakh, if India renounced its claim to the overwhelmingly Muslim areas of Gilgit and Baltistan currently ruled by Pakistan.