Musharraf's peace plea gets cool reception

India gave a cool response yesterday to fresh proposals by Pakistan's president to end a decades-old dispute over Kashmir, saying it expected such ideas to be discussed in an ongoing dialogue, not in the media.

Speaking to Pakistani journalists on Monday, President Pervez Musharraf called for a debate on options to resolve the dispute over the divided Himalayan region that has caused two of the nuclear-armed neighbours' three wars.

He repeated Pakistan's willingness to drop a long-held demand for a referendum on Kashmir's future. He also called for debate on demilitarising the region and suggested a compromise over its status which could be independence, joint control or some kind of UN control.

Salman Khursheed, a general-secretary of India's governing Congress Party, said there was a need for India and Pakistan to start talking on Kashmir and Musharraf had given some "very positive indications".

But he said India needed to see progress on ending attacks by militants in Indian Kashmir. India accuses Pakistan of stoking a 15-year-old rebellion against New Delhi's rule in Jammu and Kashmir state, where more than 40,000 people have died in the conflict since 1989.