New Delhi, July 17
Bharatiya Janata Party President K. Jana Krishnamurthi today held Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf’s “utterances” at the breakfast meeting with editors yesterday responsible for the Indo-Pak summit failure at Agra.

“His utterances in the breakfast meeting makes one to suspect that a deliberate attempt to scuttle the summit’s success,” the BJP President pointed out addressing newspersons here.

“If the Pakistani President had overall interests of the summit in mind, he could not have pre-empted the success of the summit by what all he stated in his breakfast meeting”, Mr Jana Krishnamurthi said.

The BJP President said converting an informal meeting with prominent editors into a press conference for telecast to Pakistan Television, when the high-level discussions were still in progress, was a “gross transgression of diplomatic norms”.

In response to a question, Mr Krishnamurthi brushed aside Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj’s criticism of General Musharraf saying “what Sushma had stated was a fact.”

He said if Mrs Swaraj’s statement was a “breach of confidentiality” of summit talks, General Musharraf’s observation at the breakfast meeting was nothing less than “break of the summit”.

It would have been better if the Pakistan President had asked his ministers or officials to react to Mrs Swaraj’s statement instead of making an issue of it himself, he said.

Though the outcome of the summit should not surprise anyone, yet there would be regrets in some quarters, Mr Krishnamurthi said, adding that while the Indian Government had made it clear that it was prepared to discuss the Kashmir issue along with other issues related to bilateral relations, but Pakistan chose to stick to the one-point agenda of Kashmir.

Though General Musharraf had stated on his arrival that he had come with an open mind, he changed his mind within 48 hours and stuck to Kashmir issue, the BJP President said pointing out that the Pakistan President also disregarded the expressed view of the host country not to invite the Hurriyat Conference leaders for a meeting at Pakistan High Commission’s high tea.

Defending Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s initiative of inviting General Musharraf for talks, the BJP President said it was in line with the NDA government’s efforts to have good neighbourly relations.