Bofors issue resurfaces after President Pranab Mukherjee's off-record remark

NEW DELHI: The government found itself in the middle of an unwanted diplomatic incident on Wednesday as one of the most innocuous presidential visits to Sweden turned controversial because of a media interview. It turned worse when the Indian ambassador lodged an official protest for publishing an “offthe-record” comment and in doing so, only went on to confirm the veracity of what had been published by a Swedish daily.

Bofors, the one deal that has animated Indo-Swedish ties for over two decades, made an umpteenth reappearance when the President told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter that the Bofors scandal was “a media trial” and that one shouldn’t get too carried away by the publicity it had received.

“...The so-called scandal which you talk of, yes, in the media, it was there. There was a media trial. But I’m afraid, let us not be too much carried by publicity,” Mukherjee told the prominent Swedish daily.

When Indian Ambassador to Sweden Banashri Bose Harrison lodged a strong protest with Swedish national daily ‘Dagens Nyheter’ for putting out “slip of the tongue” comments by President Mukherjee during an interview to it, it came as a surprise that the bureaucracy of the world’s largest democracy was attempting to suggest contours of the article. President Mukherjee is scheduled to travel to Stockholm on a three-day state visit from this Sunday and had given this interview ahead of the first presidential visit from India to Sweden.

Harrison, in a letter to ‘Dagens Nyheter’ Editor-In-Chief Peter Wolodarski, said she has been asked to convey “disappointment of our authorities in Delhi” regarding the manner in which the interview was presented. She went on to say that the interview was done in a “most condescending” manner.

“It was both unprofessional and unethical on your part to include in the report an off-the-record correction made by the President after the interview had ended, about a slip of the tongue during the interview…,” the ambassador wrote in her letter to Wolodarski.