The leader of India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, LK Advani, has left the Indian capital New Delhi for a week-long visit to Pakistan. Advani said he considered his visit "to be a part of the happy process of steadily increasing people-to-people contacts between India and Pakistan". He will meet President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Foreign Minister Khurshid Mohammed Kasuri. India and Pakistan embarked on a peace process in January last year. The opposition leader will travel to Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, the city of his birth. Ahead of his visit, Advani met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to be briefed on the progress of the dialogue between the two countries. He said the peace process, which had begun under the previous BJP-led government of Atal Behari Vajpayee, had brought about a radical change in relations between India and Pakistan. Advani said he was pleased that the current Congress-led government had "continued to carry forward the agenda of peace through dialogue". "All this has created an atmosphere of hope that our two countries will be able to leave behind hostility of the past six decades and create a new future of peaceful, friendly and cooperative relations, befitting two sovereign nations that are more than neighbours connected by a border," Advani is quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying.
