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BJP rebuffs Jaswant, defends Operation Parakram

New Delhi: In an apparent rebuff to senior party leader Jaswant Singh, who stated last week that he would “not defend Operation Parakram,” the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday said the operation was part of “coercive diplomacy” without which Pakistan would not have signed the January 2004 accord.

“I can say that the January 6, 2004, accord with Pakistan would not have taken place without Operation Parakram,” BJP leader Yashwant Sinha told reporters.

‘Coercive diplomacy’

Strongly defending the erstwhile NDA government for launching the operation, which involved general mobilisation of the army in 2002 to prepare for a war against Pakistan after the terrorist attack on Parliament in December 2001, Mr. Sinha said this was “essentially a part of coercive diplomacy.”

In the accord, the former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf promised not to allow the use of Pakistani soil for terrorist activities against India. Mr. Sinha’s words are an apparent dig at his former Cabinet colleague Jaswant Singh’s statement last week when he had told a newsmagazine that he would “certainly not defend Operation Parakram.”

He also said he was not in India when the decision was taken.

“I was directly involved in Operation Parakram as money was required for the mobilisation. I was also a member of the Cabinet Committee on Security,” Mr. Sinha, who was then the Finance Minister, said.

“Jaswant Singh was not present but I was and I am defending the operation,” he added. – PTI

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