Singh-Musharraf agreed to Kashmir solution: WikiLeaks

Updated at: 1759 PST,  Saturday, September 03, 2011  KARACHI: A latest WikiLeaks cable has revealed that India and Pakistan had through "back channels" agreed to a non-territorial solution to Kashmir under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the then Pakistani president of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf. According to the US embassy cable - dated April 21, 2009 - Singh confirmed this to a visiting US delegation, led by then House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman in April, 2009, saying that the solution included free trade and movement across LoC. Singh told the US delegation that Delhi and Islamabad had made great progress prior to February 2007, when President Musharraf ran into trouble. "We had reached an understanding in back channels," he related, says the cable, in which Musharraf had agreed to a non-territorial solution to Kashmir. Singh went on to add that India wanted a strong, stable, peaceful, democratic Pakistan and makes no claim on "even an inch" of Pakistani territory. Singh's comments authenticate Musharraf's assertions last year that India and Pakistan had reached that stage, where they were preparing the final draft for the resolution. He had said the two sides shared drafts through "back channels", and these were in keeping with the four-point template, which he had envisaged to resolve the issue. Singh, too, mentions in the cable that the two sides had arrived at the solution through back channels.