Congress’s foreign policy helps Sharif internationalise Kashmir issue The outraged BJP on October 20 slammed Pakistan Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif for his provocative statement that he will seek the US intervention to resolve Kashmir issue during his meeting with President Barack Obama on October 23 at Washington DC, offering support to the Congress-controlled Government of India, so that it could defeat the move of Islamabad to internationalise the Kashmir issue. While talking to reporters in London during a stopover while on his way to the US, Sharif not just declared that he will seek the intervention of Obama to resolve Kashmir issue, but virtually threatened New Delhi. He said that Kashmir is a nuclear flashpoint, that both India and Pakistan are nuclear States and that if a lasting peace is to be forged in the region, Kashmir issue has to be resolved at the earliest. “The situation can become dangerous. India has nuclear bomb, so do we; India develops missiles, so do we…In July 1999 amid Kargil war, I had clearly told the then President Bill Clinton that if the US intervened, Kashmir issue could be resolved. I told him if he spends 10 per cent of the time that he was spending on Middle East, the Kashmir issue between the two countries would resolve,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was quoted as saying. In fact, this writer watched the Mian Nawaz Sharif’s interaction with the reporters. It is hardly necessary to reflect on the meaning of what he said, as each and every word that he spoke was self-explanatory. Suffice to say that there is no change whatsoever in Pakistan’s Kashmir policy and that he could go to any extent to internationalise the Kashmir issue to deflect the attention of people of Pakistan from the real issues afflicting them. Indeed, it was remarkable that the responsible BJP, unlike the Indian Foreign Office, took no time in exposing the Pakistani double-speak and extending full support to the UPA Government on Kashmir issue. The BJP believes, and very rightly, that there has to be broader consensus in the country as far as the country’s foreign policy is concerned and that all the political parties should speak in one voice on foreign policy issues. Indeed, this should be the approach. However, the fundamental question to be asked is: Will the Congress and UPA Government rise to the occasion and defend and promote further the paramount sovereign interests in Jammu & Kashmir, which is legitimately Indian legally, Constitutionally, politically and morally? The answer just cannot be in the affirmative. The answer has to a big NO. The nation should not expect any positive response from the UPA Government. Why because ever since its formation in May 2004, it has been systematically driving Jammu & Kashmir away from India. This is a statement of fact and can be verified from the various statements made from time to time by prominent Congress leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his colleagues in his Cabinet. A reference here to just six statements made by the Congress Ministers and leaders made after the formation of the UPA Government on May 21, 2004 would be in order. These statements would establish that the Congress and the UPA Government have consistently sought to weaken the Indian case in Jammu & Kashmir and help the communal cause of Pakistan and its Kashmir-based agents. 1. “The Government of India is prepared to redraw the political map of India if that could lead to the resolution of the Kashmir problem”. This statement was made by Foreign Minister K Natwar Singh during an interview to the BBC in the last week of May 2004. The interview was conducted by Karan Thapar. 2. “Our Government has decided to reward the moderate terrorists”. Terrorists is a terrorists, but the UPA Government coined a new term to mislead the nation so that it could help the cause of Kashmiri separatists supported to the hilt by Pakistan. This statement was made by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil in the first week of June 2004 during an interview to the BBC, which was also conducted by Karan Thapar. 3. “There is the need to evolve a consensus on the issues of self-rule and autonomy within the vast flexibilities provided by the Indian Constitution”. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made this statement on February 25, 2006 concluding the first roundtable conference at 7, Race Course, New Delhi. This writer was part of the conference and he, along with five other members, had opposed tooth and nail the highly atrocious resolution that was out-and-out Kashmir-centric and separatist-friendly. Our Prime Minister advocated the need to evolve consensus on the demands as put forth by the National Conference, the People’s Democratic Party and similar other Kashmir-based outfits completely overlooking the fact that self-rule, autonomy and home rule were the three major slogans of the enslaved Indians during the freedom struggle. The statement of the Prime Minister and similar other statements had angered the then Jammu & Kashmir Governor Lt Gen SK Sinha to the extent that he on March 28, 2006 announced in the University of Jammu that the Government of India had virtually stopped calling Jammu & Kashmir as an integral part of India. 4. There should be “joint-control of India and Pakistan over the State’s waters, power projects, agriculture, sericulture, tourism, forestry and environment”. Senior Congress leader and Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister (presently Union Health Minister) Ghulam Nabi Azad made this statement on March 29, 2006 while speaking in a seminar in the University of Jammu. And what he had suggested was what the pro-semi-independence People’s Democratic Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had been demanding for years. 5. There has to be “New Delhi-Srinagar axis, Islamabad-New Delhi axis and Islamabad-Srinagar axis. Trilateral dialogue is needed to resolve the Kashmir issue”. Senior Congress leader and Union Minister for Water Resources Saif-ud-Din Soz (presently president of Jammu & Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee) made these statements the same month. In other words, he vouched for a line that the Hurriyat Conference leaders had been advocating as a way out to resolve the Kashmir issue to the satisfaction of Pakistan and Kashmiri communalists and separatists. 6. On May 25, 2006, the Prime Minister declared in Srinagar that those put behind bars in connection with terrorist-related cases will be “released and rehabilitated”, that there shall be “zero tolerance for human rights abuses” and that the “Army must act within the parameters of law”. On the one hand, he gave dangerous respectability to the cult of terror and on the other hand, he created an impression that the Army had not been working within the parameters of law. The same day and at the same place, he also declared that his Government had decided to set up five working groups charged with the responsibility of reviewing Centre-State relations, put forth recommendations, which would facilitate the return to Kashmir of those who had crossed over to the other side in 1989-1990 for arms training and make recommendations for the rehabilitation of the relatives of slain terrorists. All these statements, beside what our Prime Minister did at Havana in 2006, at Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2009, New Delhi on September 25 and at New York on September 29, 2013, what he has been doing in the wake of the murder and decapitation of two soldiers in Mendhar sector on January 8 and the manner in which his Government is dealing with the prevailing grave situation along the Line of Control and international border should clear all cobwebs of confusion and establish that India is not in safe hands. The BJP would do well to take a serious cognizance of the damage the Congress-led UPA Government has caused to India during all these more than nine years of its gross misrule and revise its attitude towards it. Even other wise, the BJP and similar other parties and the nation as a whole cannot trust the Congress which has already undermined the Indian sovereignty in its desperate bid to pander to Pakistan and communalists in Kashmir and other parts of the country. The BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is absolutely right when he urges the nation again and again to decimate the Congress and establish Congress-free India without losing a single moment. To trust the Congress would be just suicidal and dangerous.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 12:36:42 +0000
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