United Nations: India and Pakistan can achieve a peaceful solution to their dispute over Kashmir only through bilateral dialogue, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said.

Speaking to reporters, Annan described the deadlock on the Indian subcontinent as having complicated the situation in the South Asian region, and added that he had been making sincere efforts to get the leadership in the two countries to start a bilateral dialogue.

He, however, said that he was not sure if Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee would meet and discuss issues concerning them on the sidelines of this month's General Assembly session.

Without directly mentioning the ongoing violence in Kashmir, 'The News' quoted him as saying that, "Even the issue of violence cannot be resolved without dialogue."

On the nuclear non-proliferation issue, he referred to the "double standards" (adopted by the developed nations), and said, that nuclear powers needed to set an example by taking nuclear disarmament initiatives, including reducing their own weapon stockpiles.

"Nuclear powers have to show to the world that they are serious about non-proliferation. Otherwise, you cannot expect others to take any such measures," he said, adding that such steps by the nuclear powers would eliminate the double standards and discourage those countries aspiring to go nuclear.

In a report recently prepared by him, Annan wrote that he wanted an agreement on expanding the UN Security Council, where bitter divisions over what to do about Iraq could not stop the US and Britain from going to war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"We can no longer take it for granted that our multilateral institutions are strong enough to cope with all these challenges," he wrote. UN members should "ask themselves whether the existing structure is adequate for the task we have before us", he added.

Annan, who is in his second and final term as Secretary-General, said the Council should be "broadly representative of the international community as a whole and of the geopolitical realities of the contemporary world".

ANI