Pak acceptance of guilt is Cong's success: Sonia

NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Sunday sought to wrest the upper hand for her party on the issue of terrorism saying that the diplomatic measures unleashed by the Congress forced the Pakistan government to ���speak out the truth��� on Mumbai.

Ms Gandhi, who has been on a whirlwind cross-country inauguration tour, made several references to the Congress-led government���s success��� on the terror issue. In doing so, the Congress chief hopes to undermine the BJP���s charge that her party has been ineffective in dealing with terror, and that policies pursued by the UPA government have made it a soft state.

Refuting the BJP���s contention that India had been made ���soft��� by the Congress-led government, Ms Gandhi told a public meeting in Uchana in Haryana, that India was fully capable of defeating the ���evil designs��� of terrorists and that ���our restraint should not be treated as our weakness.��� Taking a oblique swipe at opponents, she said that some elements which are not happy with India���s progress are trying to create ���obstacles from time to time���.

Underscoring the importance of the Pakistan���s admission about the Mumbai attack of November 26, she said: ���Pakistan was forced to speak out the truth due to the diplomatic pressure exerted by us on the country.���

On February 12, Islamabad accepted that the Mumbai attack had been planned, at least partly, on Pakistani
Terror has been a subject that the Congress chief has constantly returned to since early February.

At a rally in Jaipur, she set the ball rolling by addressing the issue of terrorism and dubbing it the greatest menace of the country. A call, she followed up at Silvasa, when Ms Gandhi said that Pakistan would be given a befitting reply, if it fomented trouble in India.