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Did Washington leak Vajpayee's letter to the press?

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is very upset over the frequent utterances his ministerial colleagues are making on different issues. He has conveyed this to many of them, but no one seems to be listening.

Those who know Vajpayee are aware that he does not believe in confrontation. He wants to be as friendly with his neighbours as I K Gujral. But his colleagues have painted quite the contrary picture of his government. His problem is that he cannot pull up his ministers and party functionaries as Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Morarji Desai and Narasimha Rao used to do. Those were the days when people used to be very scared of the prime minister. Today, because of coalition politics, and because of Vajpayee's nature, his colleagues are doing what they feel like.

If, among the ministers, it is George Fernandes, Madan Lal Khurana and Ramakrishna Hegde who cannot resist the temptation to brief the media, party colleagues like K L Sharma, Kushabhau Thackre and Venkaiah Naidu are speaking out on every subject they can think of. The prime minister is not very comfortable with the statements of one of his senior colleagues on Kashmir and Pakistan. He does not believe in using harsh language. He feels that too much is being said against China, America and Pakistan unnecessarily.

These utterances are projecting a wrong image of India. The Americans are so uncompromising about economic sanctions because of the provocative language used by certain ministers and BJP leaders. The prime minister always speaks in a very balanced manner. He is learnt to have told a couple of friends jokingly that though he has not become strong after the nuclear explosions, his colleagues have become more vocal!

Meanwhile, diplomats at the ministry of external affairs and senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office are busy guessing who leaked the secret letter which Vajpayee had written to the heads of five states.

Highly placed sources revealed that copies of the prime minister's letter were sent to the heads, including President Clinton, through the diplomatic channel. No copies were circulated among officials. The contents of the letter were not even revealed to Indian ambassadors in the countries concerned.

Sources say the letter was leaked from Washington. Certain correspondents covering the White House came to know about the contents of the letter within hours of its delivery to Clinton's office. The 'deliberate leak' was to play up the specific mention of a threat from China.

The PMO was taken aback after the letter was published. Vajpayeee himself was quite concerned and discussed the matter with senior officials. The prime minister, incidentally, was not at all happy with the letter. He did not want any country to be named as threatening. What he wanted was to say that there are threats from 'neighbours'. Naming China was a mistake which senior officials who hurriedly got the letter signed by the PM made.

Vajpayee in not at all happy over the remarks of Defence Minister Fernandes. He was politely told to be more restrained over matters relating to China. His recent statement about the weaponisation programme has now caused further embarrassment to the government.

Meanwhile, Pramod Mahajan, political adviser to the prime minister, has not been barred from briefing the press. He will only hold a briefing on political affairs. He will conduct a briefing on foreign policy only if Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra or Minister of State for External Affairs Vasundhara Raje are not available in the capital.

Rajiv Shukla