New Delhi
21 July 2010
Chidambaram,
threatens to hijack Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Pakistan
initiative.
The mild-mannered external affairs minister SM Krishna on Wednesday
locked horns
with the home ministry headed by P Chidambaram over the handling of the
recently
concluded India-Pakistan foreign ministers' talks.
A day after national security adviser Shivshankar Menon reiterated home
secretary GK
Pillai's remarks on the Headley-ISI link, Mr Krishna hit back by saying
Pillai's remarks
on the eve of the July 15 talks in Islamabad were "very unfortunate".
He felt that Pillai's
remarks presented the Pakistani side with an excuse to wriggle out of
the talks.
"Mr Pillai could have waited till I came back to issue a statement.
Perhaps it would have
been wiser if that statement had not been made just on the eve of my
visit," Mr Krishna
said here in interviews to PTI and a TV channel.
"Everyone who was privy to whatever was happening in government of
India ought to
have known that the right kind of atmosphere from India's side should
have been created
for the talks to go on in a very normal manner, but unfortunately this
episode happened,"
he elaborated.
The minister said he had discussed Pillai's comments with the Prime
Minister, whom he
had briefed upon his return from Islamabad last week. He said he was
glad that the
home ministry had since announced the appointment of a spokesperson. In
recent
months, Pillai had been briefing the media but on Tuesday the ministry
appointed
additional secretary (Naxal management) DRS Choudhry as the "official
spokesperson".
Speculation is rife that the gag order was put on Pillai under
instruction from the Prime
Minister's Office (PMO). However, when contacted, PMO sources refused
to speak on the
issue.
[Krishna had come under criticism from the Opposition BJP for not
defending Pillai's
remarks in his joint press conference with his Pakistan counterpart,
Shah Mahmood
Qureshi, who had said that "both of us were of the opinion that it
(Pillai's remarks) was
uncalled for".]
Mr Krishna also criticised the Pakistan minister's abrasive style in
his interaction with
the media.
"I think we can put forward any contention that a country can face in a
most forceful way
but there has to be dignity, there has to be civility and civility is
certainly no weakness,"
he asserted.
However, Mr Krishna said he was "quite satisfied" with his Pakistan
visit as it was a
confidence building exercise and "to that extent, we have succeeded".
Responding to a question on BJP's stand that India should not talk to
Pakistan now, he
said he had briefed the BJP leaders before his visit to Islamabad and
conveyed the
desirability of engaging Pakistan.
"There is no alternative. If somebody can come out with an alternative,
I can consider
that," Mr Krishna noted.
The BJP has said that talks with Pakistan would prove fruitless as long
as state actors
such as the ISI and the army in Pakistan continued to sponsor and abet
terror against
India.
"ISI and army [of Pakistan] are involved in this state-sponsored
terrorism.... The
Pakistan government is working under ISI and army's pressure," BJP
spokesperson
Shahnawaz Hussain said here Wednesday, and maintained that talks could
not be held
if terrorism was not on the agenda.
Brajesh Mishra, a former national security adviser in the erstwhile
BJP-led NDA
Government led by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has said
that the UPA
Government had made a "serious mistake" by dialoguing with Pakistan and
that the
recently concluded talks were "bound to fail" as there were elements in
India and
Pakistan who were not particularly happy with the way talks had been
arranged.
In an interview to a TV channel, Mr Mishra said, "It is now fairly well
known that even the
government was divided on the issue of undertaking talks with Pakistan
without Pakistan
having done anything on terrorism[.] Even within the Congress party,
there have been
differing voices ...". He asserted that the government should not have
held talks,
particularly if it knew about the involvement of Pakistan in the Mumbai
attacks.
Mr Mishra went on to note that even in Pakistan, its armed forces
wanted the tension
between the two countries to continue while a section of civilian
establishment there
wanted the talks to move forward.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said
that his country
was prepared to go the "extra mile" if India took steps to resume the
peace process.
Qureshi, who was speaking Wednesday in Islamabad at a seminar on the
topic of
'India's cold start military doctrine', said Pakistan wanted to discuss
all outstanding
issues, including the "core issue" of Kashmir, so that they could be
resolved peacefully.
"Pakistan remains firmly committed to the objective of peace and
stability in South Asia,"
he said.
Mr Qureshi said Pakistan was pursuing a three-pronged approach with
India to achieve
durable peace and strategic stability in South Asia.
"This includes a peaceful resolution of all outstanding disputes,
including the core issue
of Jammu and Kashmir; strategic restraint and conventional balance; and
close
cooperation for the socio-economic development and welfare of our
peoples," Mr Qureshi
added.
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