New Delhi: Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has said that India would like to ensure that the current opportunity of creating peace with Pakistan is not squandered and that the political leadership in both the countries should "respond".

"This past January in Islamabad we made another promising start. We would, of course, like to ensure that this opportunity is not squandered," he said in an interview to 'Newsweek' magazine.

Vajpayee said the India-Pakistan cricket series has demonstrated how goodwill and friendship can be promoted between the people of India and Pakistan.

"The political leadership of both countries has to respond to these feelings," he said.

Asked as to what India could do to remove the Kashmir conflict from being the biggest obstacle to peace, the Prime Minister said, "The biggest obstacle to peace is mistrust and suspicion".

"Once our two countries interact more regularly, trade with each other and realise the benefits of peaceful coexistence, then we will find solutions to every problem, including our differences on Jammu and Kashmir. Both India and Pakistan have to work for this," he said.

Replying to a question whether he was confident of getting another five-year term, Vajpayee said, "The people of India have seen our performance and are satisfied with it. We have earned their trust. We have also placed them our vision and our priorities for the future."

He said that by and large the mood in the country was that his Government did not get enough time to accomplish its agenda and therefore deserved another five-year term.

On Muslims joining BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), he described it as another instance of "the impossible becoming possible".

"Our Muslim brethren have seen for themselves that our Government has not been discriminating against them," he said adding that this was the beauty of democracy.

On the economic front, the Prime Minister said he saw India becoming a developed nation by 2020, "economically strong, free of the problems of underdevelopment and playing a meaningful role in the world as befits a nation of more than one billion people."

He said the first priority of his Government was to speed up economic growth rate to eight per cent on a more sustainable basis. "We will make India a service provider to the world, a major manufacturing hub and a centre of the knowledge economy," he said.

Asked about his greatest achievement during his six years in office, Vajpayee said achievements in IT, telecom, highway construction, the nationwide rural roads programme and spread of elementary education has no parallel in the past.