Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has once again raked up Gujarat violence saying it "exposed the myth of Indian secularism".

Musharraf was speaking at a banquet he hosted for Iranian President Syed Muhammad Khatami, on Monday night.

He had raked up the issue of Gujarat violence in his address to the United Nations general assembly last November, infuriating Chief Minister Narendra Modi who attacked the Pakistani President during his poll campaign addressing him as 'Mian Musharraf' repeatedly.

Making Indo-Pak relations the central theme of his banquet address, Musharraf accused India of entertaining "hegemonic ambitions".

He said New Delhi's efforts to "impose a military solution on Kashmir and to use coersive diplomacy through concentration of troops on our borders have failed miserably".

He expressed hope that Iran would help resolve the Kashmir issue in line with U N resolutions.

While making a brief mention of potential of Iran to play a role in easing Indo-Pak tensions, Khatami in his speech avoided direct response to repeated references by Musharraf to Pakistan's tension ridden relations with India.

"We have good relations with both India and Pakistan and we can play an important role in defusing tensions between the two. We have even in the past tried to find solutions to defuse tensions," Khatami said.

"While we have welcomed and reciprocated India's recent decision to move its troops back to peace-time locations, we hope that, as the next logical step, India would engage in a serious and meaningful dialogue with Pakistan to resolve Kashmir and other issues," Musharraf said.

Terrorism in all its forms and manifestations is condemnable and there could be no justification for it, it was necessary to make a distinction between terrorism and "legitimate struggle for self-determination", he said.

He alleged that in the recent past India had embarked on a "sinister campaign to malign the Kashmiri freedom struggle by trying to link it with terrorism". "The Kashmiri struggle cannot be de-legitimised by such false and malicious claims," he added.