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Musharraf `deeply hurt' by Vajpayee's denial

Nirupama Subramanian

ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf does not care much for the criticism his book In the Line of Fire has drawn, but he is "deeply hurt" that the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has refuted his account of the Agra summit.

He said this during an informal chat with journalists and others at a dinner prior to a press conference on Wednesday.

President Musharraf said that no other person's criticism bothered him so much as Mr. Vajpayee's.

In the book, he said that after the failure of the summit, he told Mr. Vajpayee that both of them had been "humiliated" by some other person, and that the former Prime Minister made no reply.

Mr. Vajpayee said no one had humiliated President Musharraf or him, and that the summit failed because of the Pakistan President's refusal to describe the violence as terrorism.

President Musharraf said although he was "deeply hurt" by this denial, he was not going to make an issue of it, and would not come out with any rebuttals.

Asked at the press conference about Mr. Vajpayee's statement, he said he had "great respect" for the Indian leader, but what he had said in the book was the "truth."

He said there was no dispute on the definition of terrorism. "What I have said in the book is final, and I stand by that."

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