Agence France Presse

Kuala Lumpur, June 13:

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said today he was very hopeful that the decades-old Kashmir dispute with India can be resolved. “I am very hopeful. The most important thing is for the leadership to have the will to reach a conclusion and I see that at this moment the leadership does have the desire and the will,” he told reporters on a stopover en route to Australia. “Therefore, I am optimistic that it will be resolved in a certain time frame,” he said, according to the national Bernama news agency. Musharraf said he would “love to go” to Indian-held Kashmir but that the time was not right to propose a visit. “Let’s see how things develop,” he added. The Pakistani leader also defended the decision to deport top Al Qaeda

operative Abu Faraj al-Libbi to the United States after his arrest in May, saying it was an important move for the international fight on terror. “If you can do much more to get to the roots of Al Qaeda, to apprehend more people around the world through the interrogation of this one man, I think that is more important than trying him in Pakistan,” he said. “Trying him will come later and we’ll think about that later,” he said of the man who allegedly masterminded two assassination attempts against him in December 2003.