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Congress slams Vajpayee for Agra failure

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The Congress on Tuesday asserted that the "absence of an agenda at the Agra summit" had forced the government to accept Kashmir as the central issue in Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's talks with Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf.

"Which previous government has made Kashmir a central issue (in Indo-Pak dialogue)?" asked former external affairs minister and senior Congress leader K Natwar Singh while addressing reporters outside Parliament.

He was expressing his party's criticism of Prime Minister Vajpayee's reply in Parliament on the Agra summit debate.

Criticising External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh's intervention on the Agra debate, Singh said: "He has lived up to his reputation of talking a great deal but saying nothing."

Referring to the prime minister's reply, Singh said: "We are none the wiser after hearing him about what went wrong at Agra."

"Both Vajpayee and Singh confessed that there was media mismanagement. They are trying to sell the idea that they had an agenda for the summit, but nobody is convinced," the Congress said.

Underscoring that the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had done exhaustive preparation before undertaking his visit to China, Singh asked: "How much does Prime Minister Vajpayee know about the Agra summit?"

"They (the prime minister and the external affairs minister) should have the humility to learn something," Singh said, pointing out that the government had made four different statements within 48 hours, each contradicting the previous one.

He lashed out against Jaswant Singh for the latter's reported statement that foreign capitals were heaping praises on India for its Agra initiative.

"Is Jaswant Singh looking for certificates from foreign capitals?" he asked.

When reporters asked Natwar Singh what exactly, in his view, were the shortcomings of the Agra summit, he said: "Did Vajpayee raise the nuclear issue with General Musharraf?"

"All we are saying is that please go better prepared (to Pakistan) and keep the process going," he said.

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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