Islamabad: Pakistan on May 2 announced it would reciprocate Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's announcement of appointing a High Commissioner to Islamabad by sending its Envoy to New Delhi.

"We welcome Prime Minister Vajpayee's announcement in Indian Parliament today (May 2), including the one relating to the appointment of a High Commissioner," Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri said.

Kasuri said Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali will "respond in a concrete form" about appointment of the High Commissioner to India.

Pakistan has always called for maintaining ties at the level of the High Commissioners and have been supportive of people to people contacts and resumption of various links and exchanges, he told reporters after an exhaustive five-hour meeting with President Pervez Musharraf.

He said even at the time when India had recalled its High Commissioner from Islamabad, Pakistan did not ask Ashraf Jehangir Qazi to return. "It has always been our policy that we must have High Commissioner level of relations."

Terming the Indian overtures as "better late than never", Kasuri said, "Pakistan is ready to start the dialogue process so as to hold meaningful discussions on all outstanding issues between the two countries including that of Jammu and Kashmir.

"We are pleased that measures previously taken by India unilaterally, which had affected our relations, are being withdrawn by the government of India," Kasuri said.

Kasuri said Jamali had taken the initiative to end the 18-months old impasse and bring things back to normalcy.

"It was Prime Minister Jamali who picked up the phone and spoke with Prime Minister Vajpayee and invited him to visit Pakistan," he said.

Kasuri denied the two countries were under some external pressure to resume talks. About US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's forthcoming visit to the subcontinent, he said, many friendly countries, including the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany and France are interested that the two countries resume normal relationship.

"It will be unfair to term it as outside pressure," he said. But he pointed out that others can help only if there is a desire to resume peace and that desire has amply been demonstrated during the last few days.

"The momentum has to come from within India and Pakistan. Ultimately we have to talk to each other."

Kasuri said he feels Kashmir is slowly acquiring urgency particularly after what has happened in Iraq, adding, world leaders including US President George W Bush had highlighted the importance of Kashmir.

Crediting the resumption of normal ties to both Vajpayee and Musharraf, Kasuri said the beginning of the talk-process would enable the two countries to focus on economic and social development of its people.

PTI