'All parties must change thinking on Kashmir'

"We have to be ready to look into all different possibilities and different scenarios," Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, 31, told AFP in an interview in this summer capital of Indian Kashmir.

"The time has come when we need to rise above traditional positions."

Farooq, head of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Kashmir's main separatist conglomerate, had a chance meeting with Musharraf in Amsterdam before the Pakistani leader went public on October 25 with a raft of new proposals for the resolution of the decades-old dispute over Kashmir.

Included in what Musharraf said were mere suggestions to be debated was one to demilitarise Kashmir, which is currently divided between Pakistan and India, and place sections of it under United Nations mandate or under joint control.

He also departed from Pakistan's insistence that a plebiscite be held in the Himalayan region for Kashmiris to determine their own future, saying that because India opposed such a poll other alternatives should be looked at.

"I had very frank and honest discussion with (Musharraf) and I was very impressed with the clarity and positive attitude he has towards Kashmir," said Farooq.

"We are having a leader for the first time in Pakistan who really cares about the pain and suffering of the people of Kashmir and he wants to end it.

"That is why ... it's a very bold decision on his part to start something which is above the position taken by Pakistan for the past 55 years," he said.