NEW DELHI —  Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday welcomed recent peace proposals from Pakistan in the latest sign the rivals may be ready to start hashing out a deal over divided Kashmir.

The Himalayan region split between India and Pakistan and claimed by both is at the heart of their decades-long dispute. How to solve the problem was the subject of the recent Pakistani proposals. While Singh made no direct mention of the region Wednesday, his comments were seen as an indication India could be ready to talk about its fate.

"I had read about some new ideas and thoughts expressed from Pakistan," Singh said during a speech in the northern Indian city of Amristar.

"We welcome all ideas as they contribute to the ongoing thought process," he said in Punjabi, according to the official English text of the speech. "We need to put the past behind us."

The spokeswoman for Pakistan's foreign ministry, Tasnim Aslam, called Singh's comments "positive."

Kashmir, an overwhelmingly Muslim region, has been the focus of two of the three wars predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan have fought since independence from Britain in 1947 during the bloody partition of the subcontinent.

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A fitful peace process begun in 2004 has seen tensions ease considerably between the longtime rivals, both nuclear-armed, but there has been little public progress on Kashmir.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf earlier this month said Islamabad was willing to give up its claim to all of region if India reciprocated and agreed to jointly administer Kashmir, which would be granted a wide degree of autonomy.

The comments came less than a month after India and Pakistan renewed the peace process, temporarily suspended by New Delhi following the July 11 Mumbai train bombings, which killed more than 200 people. India says Pakistan's intelligence agency played a role in the attack, a charge Islamabad denies.

While Musharraf has made similar proposals before, Indian officials have often been irked by him doing so through the media and have rarely responded.

Musharraf's proposal was similar to what officials privately say is being discussed in back channel negotiations, largely between retired officials on both sides.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, have said the main features of a Kashmir deal would be an opening for travel and trade of the heavily fortified frontier between the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. There would also be a staggered withdrawal of troops from each side of the region.

Accepting such a plan would be a major departure for both countries.

India has repeatedly demanded that before any moves are made to end the dispute over the region, Pakistan must clamp down on Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, an insurgency that has killed about 68,000 people since its onset in 1989.

New Delhi accuses Pakistan of providing training and material to the insurgents, while Islamabad says it only provides diplomatic and moral support.

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Associated Press reporter Matthew Pennington in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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