All issues but sovereignty and secularism to be discussed with Pak: Gujral

External Affairs Minister Inder Kumar Gujral on Friday said all issues would be negotiable with Pakistan other than issues involving India's sovereignty and secularism.

Responding to a demand for an explanation for a statement he made in Parliament offering unilateral travel concessions to Pakistani visitors, Gujral said India's basic interests would not be compromised in the process.

Gujral said India was making the unilateral gesture because "we do not believe in waiting for reciprocity". Further, India was now in a position to be magnanimous where good relations with all its neighbours were concerned.

Fifty years after Independence, India was in a mood of positive optimism which it wanted to share with its neighbours. ''We will invite them here,'' he said.

The minister decried the system by which visitors from Pakistan had to report to a police station. ''We build these walls to humiliate each other, and I don't like it,'' Gujral said, adding that the practice would be ended step by step. First senior women and children would be exempted from reporting to police stations. Later, all elderly people would be exempted, he said.

He said it was strange that undesirable elements from any country could move around perfectly freely while respectable people from a neighbouring country had to report to police stations.

The minister agreed to stop the system of visa fees from students. A cut in telecom tariffs would be also useful, he said.

Gujral expressed worry for the 250 Indian prisoners of war in Pakistan jails and said efforts would continue to campaign for their release.

''Pakistan has denied holding them." he said, "but how credible that is I don't know.'' He agreed with the demand that more places of Muslim pilgrimage in India should be opened up for visitors from Pakistan. On a similar line, talks were on with Islamabad to open Sikh places of worship in Pakistan to Indian pilgrims.

"Ultimately," Gujral told a cheering House, "we did not believe in the two-nation theory."

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