M A I N   N E W S

Cong, Left condemn PM
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Sept 11 — The Congress, the CPM and the CPI today condemned the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, for sharing the dais with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and making statements which they claimed were an “endorsement of the communal platform”.

The main opposition party, the Congress, also criticised the Prime Minister for not meeting Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen Pervez Musharraf, in New York saying that India had lost a golden opportunity to tell Pakistan to stop cross-border terrorism.

“The Prime Minister indulged in linguistic acrobatics and verbal jugglery on the Hindutva agenda and in the process the ‘mukhota’ has fallen,” Mr Natwar Singh, Chairman of the AICC’s foreign affairs department, told reporters here.

“After this, there need be no illusions on the hidden and real agenda that Mr Vajpayee represents and espouses,” he said, adding, “The BJP represents obscurantism, fundamentalism and communalism at its worst. The VHP claims to speak on behalf of the Hindus but in reality the VHP distorts and destroys the very essence of the Hindu culture.”

About Mr Vajpayee not meeting General Musharraf, he said, “the Prime Minister has lost a golden opportunity. It would have been a good step if he met General Musharraf and told him to stop cross-border terrorism. After all, the roots of terrorism are in Islamabad”.

“There is no harm in talking to Musharraf... in the past too we dealt with Zia-ul-Haq for 11 years... what type of government is there in Pakistan we should talk to them as only the people of that country have the right, and not we, to choose a government in that country,” Mr Natwar Singh, a former Foreign Affairs Minister, said.

Mr Natwar Singh ridiculed Mr Vajpayee for having been able to meet only two leaders — Prime Ministers of Nepal and Bangladesh — saying that there were more than 150 Heads of State or Government present at the millennium meet at the United Nations.

He said Mr Vajpayee should have acted as a visionary leader and talked about secularism, democracy, North-South dialogue and peace in the South Asian region rather than devoting two-thirds of his speech to Musharraf and Pakistan.

However, the Congress welcomed the visit of the Prime Minister to the USA and the party accorded the highest priority to building a mutually beneficial and durable economic, political and technological relationship between the two great democracies, he said.

The Left parties also deplored Mr Vajpayee’s statements at the VHP-sponsored meeting in New York and said it had exposed the real agenda of the BJP and its “hypocrisy”.

The CPM and the CPI described Mr Vajpayee’s statements as “endorsement of the communal platform”.

“The way the VHP has been promoted by the BJP-led government at the UN and the endorsement of its communal platform by the Prime Minister is a matter of serious concern for all democratic-minded citizens,” the CPM Politburo said in a statement here.

On the other hand, the CPI Central Officer said, “When the Prime Minister makes the real intentions of the BJP so clear the country owes an explanation from other allies of the NDA.”