PM welcomes peace proposals

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday that he "welcomed" recent proposals from Pakistan for ending their decades-long dispute.

"I had read about some new ideas and thoughts expressed from Pakistan," Singh said during a speech in Amritsar.

"We welcome all ideas as they contribute to the ongoing thought process," he said in Punjabi. "The destinies of our two nations are interlinked. We need to put the past behind us."

Singh, however, made no direct reference to Kashmir, the divided Himalayan region at the heart of the rivalry between New Delhi and Islamabad - and the subject of the recent Pakistani proposals.

Still, the spokeswoman for Pakistan's foreign ministry, Tasnim Aslam, said of Singh's speech, "they are positive comments".

Split between India and Pakistan, Kashmir is claimed by both countries, which have fought two of their three wars over the region since independence from Britain in 1947 during the bloody partition of the subcontinent.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf earlier this month said Islamabad was willing to give up its claim to all of Kashmir if India reciprocated and agreed to jointly administer the region, which would be granted a wide degree of autonomy.

While Musharraf has made similar suggestions before, the comments in an interview with India's NDTV news channel were among his strongest to date.

Musharraf's comments also came just weeks after India and Pakistan renewed their peace process, temporarily suspended by New Delhi following the July 11 Mumbai train bombings, which killed more than 200 people.