PM authorises tougher stand against Pak

Rohit Bansal

New Delhi, Jan 7: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has authorised a toughening of posture to his colleagues in the stand-off against Pakistan. Those present in the Cabinet committee on security (CCS) Monday emerged clear, after a 100-minute meeting, that Mr Vajpayee is disappointed with Pak president Pervez Musharraf’s theatrics at Kathmandu, and thereby against any one-sided measures by India to curtail escalated tensions at the border. “It was clear to me that PM will still do everything to keep the P-5 in the loop, but he appears least inclined to be pushed around by the US or any other country,” a CCS member told The Financial Expresson MOnday evening.

The CCS member said, “We have no option but to ruffle feathers in the US state department”, if Washington insists on sending a special envoy to broker peace between New Delhi and Islamabad. “Our assessment is that Gen (Colin) Powell may, in fact, review his intent (expressed on a BBC interview late last week) once home minister (LK Advani) meets him in Washington (later this week),” the minister said. It is part this political call that, as a first step, BJP president Jana Krishnamurthy has gone to the extent of describing the reported US intent as “childish”.

Mr Advani leaves for the US on Tuesday. This his is first visit to the US in nearly a decade, and besides meeting Gen Powell and US attorney general John Ashcroft, he might get a meeting with US president George Bush. The Bush meeting, as is the recent US practice, hasn’t been confirmed by the White House. New Delhi expected the US president to walk in to one of Mr Advani’s meetings, like he does with some important dignitaries, purely as a signalling exercise.

The CCS has authorised the home minister to articulate detailed charges against the 20 accused whose names have been handed over to Pak last week. “Also, he (Mr Advani) has all intentions of drawing a clear line between Pakistan framing charges on the Jaish and Lashkar chiefs on minor localised offenses, and the charges of terrorism that we accuse them of,” the CCS member said.

The hardening of stand was made evident to visiting British prime minister Tony Blair as well, the CCS member argued. Mr Blair had, enroute India, said, “Pakistan has a strong position on Kashmir”. New Delhi did not take kindly to this message, and its implicit endorsement of Islamabad’s position. So, Union infotech minister Pramod Mahajan was specifically told to use unusual diplomatic language to ask Mr Blair why he was trying to “cool down” India, “when we have been cool for several decades”, so what he needed to do was to cool Islamabad instead. Thereafter, Mr Blair, took special pains to clarify what he meant, and replaced the word, “position”, with the word, “view”, and the ‘New Delhi Declaration’ contained an unambigious attack on terrorist acts, irrespective of pursuasions and political cause involved.

Besides the messages inherent in Mr Advani’s trip, and the diplomatic activity with Mr Blair, external affairs minister Jaswant Singh spent Monday chiding questions on temperatures across the LoC. “There has been absolutely no change,” was Mr Singh’s curt refrain.