Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani on Sunday expressed his “outrage” at the manner in which External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna “publicly admonished” Home Secretary G.K. Pillai “for no fault of his but for the signal service he rendered to the country by exposing the ISI's role” in the Mumbai terror attacks.
Writing on his blog, Mr. Advani said he was surprised at “our Foreign Minister quietly swallowing the insult” at the joint press conference, where his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi castigated Mr. Pillai and bracketed him with terrorist Hafeez Saeed.” “My surprise verily became a sense of outrage when a couple of days later our own Minister added injury to the Pakistani insult by publicly admonishing Pillai.”
Mr. Advani said New Delhi's Pakistan policy was in a shambles and alienated from public opinion. “Even within the government, Ministers have serious reservations about the policy.” He sought to underscore the “conspicuous contrast” of the NDA's conduct of Pakistan policy, with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee demonstrating to Islamabad “India's stand on cross-border terrorism would remain uncompromising.”
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He claimed that it was this “firm stand” that made General Pervez Musharraf to discard his “Agra attitude” and later sign a joint statement with Mr. Vajpayee agreeing not to “permit any territory under Pakistan's control to be used to support terrorism in any manner.”
Mr. Advani expressed the hope that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mr. Krishna would realise that “firmness is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. As of today, the prime purpose of India's Pakistan policy must be to force this neighbour of ours to abandon terrorism.”