Lahore, June 2: BJP chief L.K. Advani today said his party had accepted the emergence of India and Pakistan as two separate, sovereign and independent nations as an “unalterable reality of history”.

Observers believe this is the second-most significant political statement from Advani during his Pakistan trip. The first was his description of December 6, 1992 ? the day the Babri mosque was demolished in his presence ? as the “saddest day of my life” at a news conference in Islamabad on May 31.

Addressing a function organised by the South Asian Free Media Association here this evening, Advani said he made this statement because “there are still some misconceptions and false propaganda about what the BJP thinks of Pakistan”.

The “propaganda”, he added, “has no legs to stand(on) now” because it was the BJP-led NDA government that kick-started the peace process and continued it for the six years it was in office.

“Even now when we are in the Opposition, we have been supporting it equally vigorously,” he said.

Sources close to Advani said a section of the Pakistani establishment and intelligentsia believed that the BJP still opposed the two-nation theory, which was the basis of Pakistan’s emergence as a nation-state.

The RSS’s oft-repeated line of creating an “akhand Bharat”, which would include Pakistan and Bangladesh, reinforced this notion. As the home minister and deputy Prime Minister in the NDA government, Advani had warned Pakistan not to “overstep its limits” after the Pokhran blasts and later spoke of pre-emptive strikes on terrorist hideouts in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Today, he used the media forum to suggest a shift in his stand. “Both Indians and Pakistanis have to recognise and respect each other’s desire for sovereignty, security, prosperity, unity and territorial integrity of their respective countries,” Advani said.

“No solution to any of the outstanding issues between India and Pakistan, including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, can work if it erodes the sovereignty, security, unity and territorial integrity of the two countries.”

The BJP chief also made it clear that the Opposition in India will work in a “spirit of consensus” with the government for any mutually acceptable solution to pending issues.

The submission was considered significant as there was an apprehension in the ruling establishment in Pakistan that if the BJP-led Opposition refused to cooperate with the UPA government on policy matters, the peace process might not go forward.

On Kashmir, Advani said any eventual solution would have to be acceptable to India and Pakistan and to “all sections of the diverse communities that constitute the state”.