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Akhnoor, Jammu and Kashmir: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday favoured opening more cross-border routes and said he would take forward the dialogue process with Pakistan to a level where the two countries would be able to work jointly to tackle economic problems, among other issues.
Addressing a gathering comprising mostly women and border residents in Jammu and Kashmir, Singh said he was happy to visit the state.
"The dialogue process with Pakistan was confronted with certain difficulties because of the internal situation there," he said in an oblique reference to the political turmoil and the growing threat of terrorism in Pakistan before the watershed February 18 polls.
"Now those hurdles have been removed with a new democratic government coming up there, and we hope to work jointly to overcome the problems facing the peoples of our two nations by respecting the borders of each other and working for bettering lives of the people on either side of the border," he said.
Unstoppable march
Singh conceded that a number of problem areas existed despite the headway the two countries had made in the past few years. "But much remains to be done and we should be clear that much cannot be done unless there is complete peace on the border. That is not there," he said.
"Our responsibilities have increased as both of us are democracies," he said.
Singh also said that more cross-border routes would be opened as he had promised when the Srinagar-Muzzaffarabad bus service was launched in April 2005. This is an "unstoppable march", he added.
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