India and Pakistan were close to sealing an agreement on Kashmir and other contentious issues between the two countries when President President Pervez Musharraf was in power.
In an interview to Karan Thapar's Devil's Advocate programme, Musharraf, when asked if the two countries were close to an agreement that was path-breaking, said, "Yes, absolutely. On all three issues -- Kashmir, Siachen and Sir Creek".
"...I had told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and he had agreed, of course. It was his turn to come to Pakistan and we had decided that if he comes and there is no signature on at least one out of those three, if not all the three, it would be a total flop and that must never happen. So, we agreed that when he comes, there will be an agreement on at least one of those three," Musharraf said.
Asked if that one was likely to be Sir Creek, he said, "Yes, Sir Creek was more possible, but we had made great progress on the other two also".
"Siachen is very, very easy to be decided. It is only some basic semantics of what needs to be put in the text, as far as the present positions are concerned. I think we are just being too touchy about a minor issue and negating very major gains that we could achieve," the former Pakistan President said.
Musharraf said that the Siachen issue had been worked out between the two countries and it was only the Indian Army which had put its foot down on the matter.
According to Musharraf, the Kashmir issue was based on three principles which were demilitarisation, self-governance and joint mechanism. He said it was his idea "that we should carry out demilitarisation on the Line of Control and also within Kashmir. And on our side, (we will take) reciprocal action. I was suggesting that the military, the Indian military, should move out of two or three cities like Srinagar, Baramulla".
Self-governance, Musharraf continued, would have meant, "Giving maximum governance to the people of Kashmir on both sides, on the Indian side as well as the Pakistan side. One could have carried on with the existing structures on both sides and taken the people of Kashmir from both sides onboard," he said.
"Joint mechanism was to oversee that self-governance and also to discuss whatever we have not devolved with the people of Kashmir. There was supposed to be a body (comprising) Kashmiris on both sides and from Pakistan and India," he revealed.
As far as Kashmir was concerned, Musharraf said the idea in Pakistan was to make the Line of Control irrelevant. "...the problem was the Line of Control because there was a feeling that the Indian side wanted the Line of Control to be made permanent.
On our side, we thought that it is a dispute therefore a dispute cannot be a solution. The idea was to make the Line of Control irrelevant," he said.
The former Pakistan President said, "There was an understanding on the principles but the nitty-gritty that you were getting into, a lot of work had to be done on the details of how to demilitarise, and where to take hundreds of thousands of troops and where should we be going? There were a lot of details required".
Musharraf said he would have cooperated in the investigations into the Mumbai terror attacks if he had been the President. "Well certainly we would have co-operated in the investigation, because we wouldn't like Pakistan to be blamed for being an accomplice- the government, or the army, or the Inter Services Intelligence -- because that is what generally gets projected, that they were accomplices in whatever happened; we would have joined the investigation and brought whoever has done it to book".
Asked if he would have been so positive as to give the message directly to Dr Singh over the phone, he said, "Yes, indeed -- certainly".
On terror accused Hafiz Muhammed Sayeed's release, he said, "I am not privy to what exactly happened in the courts, appeals, rejection but if the evidence was against him, then they should have proceeded against him, certainly. If there is evidence then one has to move against them. What the courts did and what the government did with the courts, I am not privy to that".
On whether he would have allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to interrogate people arrested in connection with the Mumbai terror attack, he said, "I wouldn't be able to comment because I don't know if this is the case, that they have detained some people and are refusing access to the FBI".
"I would like to say that I was extremely sensitive when anybody -- FBI or anyone else --did not trust what we were doing and didn't have faith in the capabilities of the ISI or our interrogation agencies and they wanted something separate. We are a sovereign country and I didn't like that at all," he pointed out.
But he hastened to add that he would have allowed the FBI to come and conduct joint interrogations with Pakistan police teams.
