THE PRIME Minister of Azad Jammu Kashmir, Sultan Mahmood Choudhary, met High Wycombe mayor Mahboob Hussain, MP David Lidington and local members of the Kashmiri population.

He has been visiting centres of Kashmiri population around the country, including Bradford, Luton and Birmingham, to draw attention to Kashmiri calls for an independent state.

At present the country is partitioned between India and Pakistan with the two countries in bitter dispute over its future. Azad Kashmir is on the Pakistani side of the border.

Sultan Mahmood Choudhary was guest of Aylesbury mayor Raj Khan, who is from Pakistan.

Both High Wycombe and Aylesbury have substantial numbers of people of Kashmiri background.

Cllr Hussain, who visited Kashmir last autumn with MEP James Elles, used the prime minister's visit to raise the issue of people losing homes and lands as a result of a dam extension.

Mr Lidington ( Con, Aylesbury) who spent his honeymoon in Kashmir in 1989, and in September met Kashmiri people in refugee camps on the Pakistani side of the border, said there was a humanitarian reason for trying to get something done.

But there was another. "This might seem a far away part of the world, but we are talking about a bitter dispute between two nuclear powers and we cannot be indifferent."