Leaders from Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir on Monday met in Kathmandu for the first time and favoured frequent people-to-people contacts between India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue.

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Former Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, who attended the two-hour meeting along with another moderate leader Abdul Gani Bhat, said such interactions should increase and similar meetings should be held in Muzaffarabad, Srinagar and Jammu.

Former prime minister of PoK Sultan Mahmud, Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference President Atiq Ahmed and JK Liberation League chairman Majid Malik represented PoK at the meeting, held on the sidelines of a conference on Kashmir being organised by the US-based think-tank Pugwash.

"This was a very good meeting and a good beginning as the new year is approaching. We hope that 2005 will usher in a new dawn of peace in south Asia," Farooq said.

He said the meeting gave an opportunity to the leadership from both sides of Kashmir to express their views on finding a
peaceful and amicable resolution to the Kashmir issue.

"All the participants were of the firm opinion that dialogue was the only way to resolve the Kashmir issue," the former Hurriyat chairman said.

"Both India and Pakistan should now ensure that no one is allowed to create hurdles or any kind of impediments in ensuring a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue," he said.

Pro-Pakistan hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani stayed away from the meet.

Setting the record straight, Pugwash on Sunday said that Geelani's non-participation was his own decision and that neither Nepal nor the Indian government had stopped him.

Among others who attended the meet were Sajjad Lone (Peoples Conference), Abdul Rasheed Shaheen (National
Conference), Jammu University Vice-Chancellor Amitabha Mattoo, Panthers Party chief Bhim Singh, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front leader Ghulam Rasool Dar and professor of political science in Kashmir University Ghulam Mohammed Baba.