NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata Party president L.K. Advani on Sunday expressed the hope that India and Pakistan would leave behind the hostility of the past and create a ``new future'' of peaceful, friendly and cooperative relations.

Mr. Advani, who leaves on a week-long tour of Pakistan on Monday on the invitation of the Pakistan Government, said the trip was in continuation of the bold and historic initiative taken by the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for lasting peace and normalisation of relations through the process of sincere and sustained dialogue.

``I consider my visit to be a part of the happy process of steadily increasing people-to-people contacts at various levels,'' he said in a statement.

According to Mr. Advani, the joint statement issued in Islamabad on January 6, 2004, after the talks between Mr. Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, was a ``major breakthrough'' that brought about a radical change in the bilateral relations and triggered the peace process that had progressed steadily since then.

Noting that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Government had continued to carry forward the agenda of peace through dialogue, Mr. Advani said that credit must also be given for valuable contributions to parliamentarians, functionaries of various parties as well as to civil society representatives such as mediapersons, businessmen, lawyers, artistes and cultural personalities.

``Turning the hope of peace into a reality of lasting peace is no doubt a formidable task. Its fruition requires patience, perseverance, sincerity and trust on both sides,'' he said.

Mr. Advani said he looked forward to his meetings with Gen. Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri and other leaders in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

The visit has a nostalgic significance for the BJP leader who was born in Karachi.

It connotes a ``return-to-the-roots'' for him as he had visited his birthplace only once after partition — in 1979— as Minister of Information and Broadcasting.

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