BJP sees PM playing into Pak hands

NEW DELHI: The BJP on Friday flayed Manmohan Singh for responding positively to Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s four-point proposal on the resolution of the Kashmir dispute, charging that the prime minister was “in a hurry to change the country’s geography in order to get into history”.

“The prime minister is in a hurry to find a place in history on Indo-Pak relations,’’ BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley said here on Friday. “Mr Singh forgets that history can be very harsh,” he added.

The BJP spokesman came down heavily on the prime minister for his policy on Jammu and Kashmir. “At Havana, he abandoned the national position and accepted general Musharraf’s assertion that Pakistan too was a victim of terrorism,” Mr Jaitley alleged. He argued that the PM had jettisoned the traditional Indian position on cross-border terrorism and the status of Pak-occupied Kashmir.

“We had managed to convince the international community about the centrality of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in the dispute between the two countries. The prime minister has fallen into a trap laid by Pakistan by accepting the centrality of Kashmir,’’ Mr Jaitley contended.

“By deciding to set up a joint-mechanism on terrorism, Mr Singh allowed Pakistan to get a foot in the door. Here, president Musharraf’s strategy worked,” the BJP leader said, adding, “Mr Singh forgets that a surrender is not a solution.

That position will neither be accepted by India nor any Indian.” Assessing the Manmohan Singh government’s track-record in the year gone by, the BJP general secretary felt that it was a Congress-led coalition at the Centre governing both on the agenda and style of the third front.

Traditionally, Congress governments at the Centre, the BJP spokesman explained, were characterised by a strong central leadership which used to work on their own agendas. “The Manmohan Singh government, on the contrary, has been reduced to toeing the agenda set by players such as Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, Mr A R Antulay, Mr Arjun Singh and Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav,” Mr Jaitley claimed.

There was, he said, a hardening of caste-identities during this period. “It was a Congress-led government with a third front agenda, a weak leadership which had no agenda of its own,” the BJP spokesman said.