The Hindu : National : ``Manmohan's statement on Pakistan disturbing''

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Thursday, Sep 14, 2006
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``Manmohan's statement on Pakistan disturbing''

Special Correspondent

Amounts to giving a clean chit to ISI: BJP

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party has described as "disturbing, worrisome and untimely" Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that Pakistan itself was a victim of terrorism. That statement, the party felt, would give Pakistan a way to wriggle out of its commitment given in January 2004 to check terrorist activities against India carried out from territory under its control.

Party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said here on Wednesday that the Prime Minister's statement was all the more untimely as it had come when a Pakistani connection had been traced in almost all major terrorist attacks around the world and Pakistan had emerged as the "global epicentre of terrorism."

The party virtually charged the Prime Minister with giving a "clean chit to ISI [Inter Services Intelligence]" when he said that terrorist outfits like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad could also act autonomously. Dr. Singh had made the statement on board the aircraft that took him from Frankfurt to Brasilia.

Mr. Prasad said the National Democratic Alliance government's engagement with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had floundered in the past — the reference was to the failed Agra Summit — as Pakistan had refused to acknowledge that territory under its control was being used to stage terrorist attacks against India. That roadblock was cleared in January 2004 when in a joint statement with the then Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, General Musharraf had acknowledged this and agreed that Pakistan would control and prevent this happening.

Mr. Prasad said the BJP's view was that unless Pakistan gave "credible demonstration" of destruction of the terrorist infrastructure that has been created in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, there could be "no meaningful dialogue possible."

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