India urges Pakistan to use official channels

"We have heard those comments," Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna told reporters referring to ideas mooted late Monday by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf who suggested independence, joint control with India or demilitarisation of Kashmir.

"We do not believe that Jammu and Kashmir is a subject on which discussions can be held through the media," Sarna said bluntly.

"It is one of the subjects in the composite dialogue process," underway between the two neighbours since January, the spokesman said.

"So if there are any proposals, suggestions regarding that, that is the forum that we expect they will be brought to."

The dialogue process aimed at resolving eight separate points of dispute between India and Pakistan, including Kashmir, has already gone through several rounds of talks, including at the foreign minister level last month.

Kashmir has been divided between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India since they won independence from Britain in 1947. Both the nuclear rivals claim the Himalayan state and have fought two of their three wars over it.

On Monday, Musharraf called for a national debate on Kashmir saying that since a plebiscite in Kashmir as demanded by old UN resolutions and Pakistan was not acceptable to India, other options had to be explored.