I met him to request him not to raise the limit of 26 per cent in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the print media. Hardly had I begun to advance arguments against the hike, he said that there was "no such proposal before the government." I did not pursue the matter.

The room in which the Prime Minister met me was the same one where I had interviewed former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee many a time before. There was not much of a change in the décor except that there were two straight chairs in place of sofas. The Prime

Minister sat on one and I occupied the other. It was not a regular interview, just a chit-chit. Since the talk on the FDI did not last beyond a couple of minutes, I utilised the opportunity to discuss India-Pakistan relations and Kashmir. He was gushing with sentiments for the best of equation between the two countries. He wanted them to be the closest neighbours like America and Canada, with easy travel facilities. Whatever he could do to normalise relations, he was prepared to do.

"We have so many things in common and I told this to President General Pervez Musharraf who agreed with me," said Manmohan Singh. "I told him that both of us were not politicians and have come from outside. We should be able to find a solution to the problems the

countries face." The Prime Minister wanted a settlement quickly, without losing further time.

Manmohan Singh sounded like a person whose biggest ambition was to make India and Pakistan tick. Strange, when I met Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri last month at his office in Islamabad, he gave me the impression as if the earnestness that he found in the Vajpayee setup was lacking in the Manmohan Singh government. I saw no such trace while talking to the Prime Minister. Instead, he prayed the solution should come about during his tenure of prime ministership. He talked feelingly about the closeness which had eluded them. He sounded somewhat helpless in not being able to span the distance between the two countries and wished he could do more.

Asked if former Prime Minister Vajpayee had left any papers on the initiative he had taken, Manmohan Singh said there was none. In that connection, he had met Vajpayee who said that there was nothing except 'baat se baat chaleey' (talks lead to further talks). These words from a couplet of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a revolutionary Urdu poet from Pakistan, were first used by Inder Gujral when he, as Prime Minister, met the then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at Male to discuss the steps to repair relations between India and Pakistan. When Sharif asked Gujral, what next, the latter said: "baat se baat chaleey."

Manmhan Singh said that he conveyed to President Musharraf that India was keen on settling all the problems the two countries faced. Both met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly at New York in September. This was a one-to-one meeting lasting for an hour. Manmohan Singh said that his impression was that President Musharraf was equally keen on settling the problems.

Probably, the failure of talks over the Baglihar power project was on his mind when Manmohan Singh said that the Indus Treaty apart, he was prepared for joint consultations on such things so that the two countries worked in harmony for the common good. They could together develop the two countries economically because the leaders on both sides owed it to their people.

On Kashmir, he said he told President Musharraf that he could not redraw the boundaries because such an authority vested in parliament. In any case, Jammu wanted to be one of the states in India and Ladakh a union territory. Any division of the state on the basis of religion would revive the communal divide of the days gone by. The subcontinent had paid a heavy price. India's ethos was secular. It could not deviate from it. There were 150 million Muslims in the country. Any settlement that was based on religious considerations could disturb things beyond anyone's imagination or control. The Prime Minister believed that the Pakistan President understood his point of view.

Manmohan Singh wanted to have talks with separatists and others. But he was disappointed. The last time when he was at Srinagar, he waited for the Hurriyat leaders but they did not turn up. (The information at this end was that Islamabad had exerted pressure on them not to meet the Prime Minister. Similarly, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who visited Delhi earlier, too reportedly told them not to meet Indian government leaders.)

I informed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that according to my sources, the Hurriyat leaders did not meet him at Srinagar because they were hurt over his statement that small minds had come to occupy high positions. He clarified that his remark was never directed towards them. He was talking about things generally when he uttered those words. He said his doors were still open for them to come and talk to him. He repeated former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao's words that "sky is the limit." (One of the Hurriyat leaders has said that they could not talk to New Delhi on the basis of autonomy. When Manmohan Singh has not put any condition for talks, why the Hurriyat was trying to dictate terms?)

When I proposed to the Prime Minister that India should allow the Kashmiris living in the part under Pakistan to come to Delhi to talk to Kashmiris on our side, Manmohan Singh said he was not averse to such meetings and the Kashmiris discussing among themselves their problems. He said he allowed one similar exercise at Kathmandu and was not opposed to more meetings of that kind. It was apparent that he was not too happy with the difficulties the intelligence agencies and the mindset bureaucrats created on both sides.

As I left the room, I came back with the impression that here was one person who would go to any length to sort out things with Pakistan and the separatists in Kashmir. My worry was that steeped as Pakistan and the Hurriyat leaders were in their strategies and tactics, they would waste the opportunity that Manmohan Singh's prime ministership offered. They should open up before a person who was so open, so transparent and so willing to clear the decks.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.