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National
Mumbai: In the light of the India-Pakistan joint statement and the de-linking of terror from the composite dialogue, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley on Saturday brought India’s foreign policy into question. The Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha was addressing a party gathering in the city. “Do we really have an independent foreign policy?” Mr. Jaitley said as he spoke about recent debates on foreign policy issues. India had “compromised” with Pakistan in Sharm El Sheikh. He pointed to the contentious G8 decision to ban export of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) items to non-NPT countries, the issues of end-use monitoring rights for equipment bought from foreign suppliers and emission caps in relation to climate change. On the joint statement, Mr. Jaitley criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for using the former Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, as a shield after making a historic blunder. There is a fundamental difference between Mr. Vajpayee’s stand and that of the United Progressive Government (UPA), he said. Mr. Vajpayee spoke from a position of strength while Dr. Singh had put India in a position of weakness by limiting its options to war or dialogue. “The BJP’s foreign policy was dialogue without terror. The Congress’ policy is dialogue irrespective of terror,” Mr. Jaitley said. Dr. Singh’s stand implied that there was a lurking fear of war if the dialogue failed, which was not necessarily the case, Mr. Jaitley said. Dr. Singh made his first foreign policy blunder in Havana in 2006, where he said Pakistan was a victim of terror. This statement on an international platform brought “moral equivalence” for Pakistan with India, Mr. Jaitley remarked. As for the mention of Balochistan in the joint statement, Mr. Jaitley said, “[India] went as the victim and came back as the accused.” Over the last 10-15 years, the language of foreign policy had become vitiated with terms like ‘cross-border terrorism,’ ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ and ‘terrorism as an instrument of state policy.’ He denounced Dr. Singh’s speech in the Lok Sabha contending that it obfuscated the meaning of the terms in the joint statement. Referring to the dropping of charges under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) against sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and others, Mr. Jaitley demanded to know why MCOCA had not been applied to the lone surviving gunman of 26/11, Mohammad Ajmal Amir ‘Kasab.’ “If the Act gives more [prosecuting] power, why has it not been invoked against ‘Kasab’? There has to be a political answer to this,” Mr. Jaitley said.
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