War of words over Indo-Pak peace process: PM rejects criticism

NEW DELHI: A new war of words broke out on Tuesday between the Government and the Opposition over the handling of the Indo-Pak peace process after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected criticism from the BJP, which retaliated by accusing the UPA of “transferring initiatives” to Islamabad.

Singh refuted various contentions made in the letter his predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayee had written to him last week in which he stated that the Government had made the peace process “Kashmir-centric” and “diluted” commitments made by Pakistan not to allow cross border terrorism from its soil.

Replying to Vajpayee, Singh said Pakistan's decision to invite the Hurriyat leaders to Islamabad and other cities was in violation of the agreement on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service between the two countries.

The Hurriyat leaders, who had applied, were given passports and “it would not be, therefore, correct to state that the authorities on our side had mishandled the visit of the Hurriyat,” Singh said.

Maintaining that his government's endeavour was to fully safeguard the country's vital interests while carrying forward the dialogue process, Singh made it clear that “there can be no redrawing of boundaries”.

“We have also ruled out any role for a third party - either through intervention or as guarantor or as mediators - in any form,” he said in his letter to Vajpayee.

Singh said India had consistently held that the dialogue with Pakistan was predicated on this commitment. “The centrality of this position was recently reflected in the joint statement released after my meeting with President Musharraf,” he said.

“We have been consistently of the view that Jammu and Kashmir has a duly-elected government which came into office after an election that was internationally held to be free and fair.”

“We recognise that there are some groups that are outside the electoral process and the All Party Hurriyat Conference is one among such groups. We are nevertheless willing to enter into a dialogue with such groups, provided they agree to abjure the path of violence. Nothing in our actions in the last twelve months has compromised our adherence to this principle,” the PM said.

Shortly after the PMO released Singh's letter, BJP leader Jaswant Singh accused the Government of “transferring initiatives” to Islamabad and wondered what it had done on Pakistan's violation of the agreement in allowing Hurriyat leaders to travel beyond PoK.

He raised questions over Singh's suggestion for converting Siachen glacier into a “peace mountain” and the government's handling of the Baglihar hydro-project issue.

“If Siachen was to be a peace pinnacle, why were troops sent there by the former Congress government (in 1984) and what additional or extraordinary circumstances have taken place now” for the Prime Minister to make such suggestions, Jaswant Singh said.

On the PM's contention that there will be no redrawing of borders, the BJP leader asked “What does he mean by open borders? You cannot have simultaneously an open border as well as an unalterable border.”

“I want the Government to state if it knows that Pakistan had violated the understanding (on plying of Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus) and what has it done till now or what it intends to do now,” asked Jaswant Singh.

He said the Government was conducting itself with Hurriyat in such a manner as if the separatist conglomerate “holds a kind of veto both on the peace process between India and Pakistan and relations between the Government and various other organisations of Jammu and Kashmir”.