IB, RAW, forces brief PM before Kathmandu trip

Rohit Bansal

New Delhi, Jan 1: Intelligence inputs, including those from the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), and the armed forces were shared with the cabinet committee on security (CCS) on Tuesday evening. Sources said the presentations gave Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee a considered status report, from a professional point of view, on Pakistan’s deployments and the prevalent mood in that country. This also enabled the new chiefs of the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force to be apprised of these aspects at the Cabinet level. This was the first CCS meeting for the two service chiefs since they took over.

The army has already briefed Mr Vajpayee on its assessment of the situation, when he visited the war room in South Block late last week for an hour, before a CCS meeting. With Tuesday’s briefing, the ball is now clearly in the PM’s court to take a political decision on what next to do in his aar paar ki ladai against terrorism and chief culprit Pakistan.

The PM in now leaving for Lucknow, his home constituency, before emplaning for the SAARC heads of state and government meeting in Kathmandu on January 4. A senior BJP leader from UP said he expected Mr Vajpayee to seek political input from UP chief minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday.

External affairs minister Jaswant Singh is leaving for Kathmandu in advance. After the CCS, Mr Singh said he had “no confirmation, yet”, on a meeting with his Pak counterpart Abdus Sattar. A top government source said, Mr Singh’s use of the word ‘yet’, as an apparent afterthought, should be seen as India’s continued interest in de-escalating tensions, no sooner Pakistan offers some shreds of evidence on combatting terrorist groups. The source said Mr Singh’s refusal to attack Pakistan president’s military spokeperson Maj Gen Rashid Qureshi for his blanket dismissal of evidence recently provided by India on the complicity of Pak-based terrorist organisations in the attacks December 13 was a conciliatory effort to control any further increase in tensions.

Sources close to defence minister George Fernandes told The Financial Express that “the minister has not even considered the option of outright war with Pakistan”. Efforts to re-confirm this with Mr Fernandes did not materialise.