New Delhi, December 6
India has dismissed as “absurd” news reports from Islamabad that a hoax call made to President Asif Ali Zardari during the Mumbai terror attacks, purportedly by someone posing as external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, had sent the Pakistani security establishment into a tizzy.
“The report is part of the propaganda by the Pakistani Army and the ISI to deflect attention from real issues,” sources here said today.
According to Pakistani daily Dawn, the call was made late on November 28, while Indian security forces were still battling the terrorists who had occupied five-star hotels in Mumbai, and the person posing as Mukherjee reportedly used threatening language while speaking to Zardari. The call had forced the Pakistani establishment to put the armed forces in a high state of alert, the news report added.
However, the Indian sources said Mukherjee had made only one call to the Pakistani leadership and that, too, to his counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi on November 27 when the latter was still in New Delhi and operations were going on in Mumbai to flush out terrorists from the hotels.
“Mukherjee had a polite conversation with Qureshi and he read out from a statement in the presence of senior officials… to suggest that Mukherjee telephoned any other Pakistani leader is part of the psychological warfare that the Pakistanis are now indulging in,’’ they added.
Asked if US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had telephoned Mukherjee in the middle of the night to inquire about the reasons for his alleged telephone call to Zardari, the sources said this was also untrue.
The sources said it was now beyond any doubt that a struggle for supremacy was on between the civilian government and the army in Pakistan. “The army naturally stands to gain in the public eye by presenting itself as the saviour of the nation and throw mud on the civilian government,’’ they added.
They noted that ever since the Mumbai attack, baseless stories had been appearing in the Pakistani media, like India has decided to suspend the border ceasefire, snap air and rail links, suspend the composite dialogue process and put its forces on a state of high alert, to list a few.
