'Mellowed' Natwar now wants peace with PM

NEW DELHI: With the investigating agencies and the Congress fire-fighters tightening the oil scam investigation screws on him and his son, and with the Left washing its hands off his project, a mellowed Natwar Singh on Thursday sought to meet the Prime Minister to apologise for his ‘un-diplomatic’ outburst.

But he was denied an appointment by PM, and Congress managers are insisting that he should tender a public apology, reports CL Manoj.

Mr Singh’s promised fireworks in the draft statement that he has sent to the Rajya Sabha chairman for scrutiny, it is learnt, is also proving to be a damp squib. It reportedly contains no explosive material against the Congress or Sonia Gandhi, but only Mr Singh’s complaints against the Volcker and Pathak panel reports. Adding insult to injury was the ruling that the privilege notice against the prime minister over the leak of the Pathak Authority report did not merit consideration.

With Mr Singh and his over-enthusiastic friends in a limbo, the Congress leadership is unlikely to show any undue hurry to make any reconciliatory moves. The day was supposed to witness Mr Singh’s stroke-filled innings inside and outside Parliament after his outburst yesterday against the prime minister.

But Congress managers succeeded in driving home the point that he could be in trouble if he went ahead with his plans. A much-sobered Singh reached the Rajya Sabha and sent out the first signal of his changed mood by making a show of greeting Mr Manmohan Singh.

His ‘coaches’ —Amar Singh of SP, Yashwant Sinha of the BJP and Digvijay Singh of JD(U) — read the message right and tried deflect focus from the flop-show by forcing an adjournment of the House demanding a discussion on the nuclear deal and the Prime Minister’s response.

Triggering off speculations that the Congress was towards a ‘patch-up’ with Mr Singh, minister of state for Parliamentary affairs Suresh Pachori was seen taking Mr Singh to his room just after the abrupt adjournment of the House.

But it is learnt that Mr Pachori was merely asking whether the suspended colleague would prefer to remain in the house to watch what would be an embarrassing moment. Mr Singh chose to leave the Parliament complex for lunch and not to return to witness Mr Shekhawat’s unfavourable verdict.

In between, in the Central Hall, Mr Singh also had a counselling session with CPM’s Sitaram Yechury and Parliamentary affairs minister, P R Dasmunshi. It is learnt that the Left camp conveyed to him that it cannot approve of the language he used against the prime minister yesterday, and advised him to tender an apology to Mr Manmohan Singh.

Going by Mr Singh’s mood and the ‘no show’ before TV cameras on Thursday, he is likely to concentrate more on framing his reply to the AICC show-cause notice in the coming days.

The show-cause notice, keeping in line with the Congress attempt to delink the party from him in the oil deal, is learnt to have once again accused him of misusing the party position by writing letters for his relatives to Iraqi leaders, while keeping the party in the dark. He is also accused of “unilaterally” including his son and cousin in a delegation to meet the Iraqi authorities. \

It also lined up cases of anti-party activities against him by citing his hobnobbing with Congress rivals and his public attack on the top leaders including the prime minister.

Summing up the Congress mood, Mr Pranab Mukherjee today said: “Mr Natwar Singh’s job was to lead a goodwill delegation to Iraq.... He did that job but at the same time he did the job of furthering the business and commercial interests of his son.”