Congress slams government over failure to get Pak-origin terror included in Goa declaration

NEW DELHI: Congress today hit out at the Modi government for its "abject failure" in getting terror emanating from Pakistan included in the joint declaration after the BRICS summmit in Goa and attacked Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar for giving credit to the RSS for cross-LoC surgical strikes, calling him a "national embarrassment".

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said the Modi government, despite its rhetoric on terror and isolating Pakistan, failed to convince BRICS member countries about including condemnation of the neighbouring country in the Goa declaration.

"Where the government is supposed to speak, where its diplomacy is supposed to do the job, there the government is an abject failure. But the Defence Minister is very quick to credit everyone, from mythology to the RSS, for the operations along the LOC (surgical strikes).

"This leads to two conclusions--Manohar Parrikar does not deserve to be the Defence Minister, this man is a national embarrassment.

"The operations along the LOC were unfortunately targeted more for the domestic consumption rather than changing the behaviour of Pakistan," he said.

Tewari said to the best of everyone's knowledge no other BRICS country is subjected to cross-border terrorism and while there is a mention to everything from ISIS, Syria and Afghanistan to Israel-Palestinian question, there is no reference to Pakistan in the entire Goa declaration.

"We have an attack in Uri, we lost our soldiers, and the government is not even able to convince its interlocutors that it was a terrorist strike," he said.

Attacking the government, the Congress leader said, "The difficulty is where the government has to speak, the government is completely and absolutely deafening in its silence and the Goa Declaration of BRICS is perhaps the most sterling example of government's absolute and abject failure."

He said, "Despite all the rhetoric and the razor-sharp discourse of terror and of isolating Pakistan, what you have is one sundry remark. One little generic remark in the almost 20 paragraph Goa Declaration."