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The US Task Force set up by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society has come out in total support of the Jammu and Kashmir government's "healing touch" policy for the "long suffering Kashmiris."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told parliament that the government was willing to look at possible options for a "peaceful, negotiated settlement" of Jammu and Kashmir dispute.

Defence personnel are concerned about the former National Democratic Alliance government's decision to allow the US military access to the northeast.

"It is simple. Identify the region, demilitarise it and change its status," Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday, a day that also marked the completion of his five years in office.

Former prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Qayyum Khan, in an interesting revelation, said that late Pakistan prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was 'very sincere' about converting the Line of Control into an international border on returning from New Delhi after signing the Shimla Agreement with former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1971.

The Indian Army will not withdraw from Siachen until Pakistan gives a written guarantee that it will not reoccupy the glacier and is prepared to recognise the Line where the troops are holding position. "We have heard President Pervez Musharraf give this assurance on Siachen not once but several times before, it is nothing new, but our position too is clear, it will be extremely foolish to pull back without written guarantees," authoritative sources said yesterday.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has emerged from the shadow of being a "nominated" head of government. More importantly, the Prime Minister's Office is now a powerful entity and the decision maker in the crucial areas of foreign policy and Kashmir, North East and the Naxal issue.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's one on one meeting with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has placed him firmly in the driving seat with his positive assessment of the general overturning the Foreign Office's focus on cross border infiltration.

Pakistan has assured India that Pakistani forces will not seize a disputed glacier high in the Himalayas if Indian troops were to withdraw from it, a Pakistani newspaper said yesterday.

Will Prime Minister Manmohan Singh place an offer to "adjust" the Line of Control "by a matter of miles" eastwards on the table when he meets President General Pervez Musharraf in New York on September 24? Time magazine in its forthcoming issue has quoted a senior Indian official as saying that this offer will be made as a result of Dr Singh's instructions to his foreign affairs team to "think out of the box" on Kashmir and "get a solution, and soon."

Separatists set for talks with Kasuri in New Delhi

India has come under renewed pressure from the US to send troops to Iraq on the plea that it will emerge as a "sovereign" state on June 30, with its chosen Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in power.