If it was US pressure that made prime minister Manmohan Singh sign the Indo-Pakistan joint declaration, leader of the opposition and BJP leader LK Advani followed this up on Monday by lodging a complaint with the Americans about what Singh had done.
In the joint declaration signed in Egypt, India agreed to delink the composite dialogue process with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and allowed the inclusion of a reference to the trouble in Baluchistan.
The BJP intends to take up the issue in Parliament during a discussion on home affairs, and during a debate on the PM’s visits abroad, probably on July 29. While the Congress has been unable to defend Singh, the BJP feels the government will not be able to get away on this issue as easily as it did on the nuclear deal.
“The nuclear deal was too technical for most people to understand. This is not. Besides, it is an emotive issue. People got killed in the 26/11 attacks and in other terror incidents,” said the BJP’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj.
The joint statement issued by India and Pakistan in Sharm El-Sheikh was the main topic of discussion between Advani and US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Advani told Clinton that the joint statement delinking terrorism from composite dialogue had “disrupted the national consensus” on the issue. Advani expressed unhappiness over the reference to Balochistan, saying it puts India “in the dock” on disruptive activities in the region.
“In India, there was a national consensus after 26/11 that till Pakistan takes strong measures, there cannot be talks. The joint statement has disrupted the consensus,” Swaraj said in her briefing on Advani’s one-to-one talks with Clinton.“We favour good relations with the US, but action against the consensus will not get the country’s support,” Advani told Clinton.
“The statement has named Balochistan as if we are doing something there. There is no rationale behind it,” he told the secretary of state.
