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Congress knives out on summit failure

Sheela Bhatt in New Delhi

While the Congress party in public blames Pakistan for the failure of the Agra summit, privately its leaders are preparing to grill the government in the upcoming Parliament session.

A senior Congress Working Committee member said that before the Agra summit the Congress was busy calculating the goodwill that will accrue to Vajpayee due to the success of the summit.

"But the collapse has put us in a position to ask the government questions about the failure in the coming Parliament session," he added.

According to rediff.com sources the absence of any senior National Democratic Alliance leader to spearhead the damage control exercise has also prompted the Congress to make most out of the failure.

Former foreign affairs minister K Natwar Singh told rediff.com, "We had welcomed the summit. But we are very disappointed to see the outcome. We anticipated a breakthrough, but here we are faced with a breakdown."

He said that his party felt that Musharraf took a rigid stand and also did a diplomatic faux pas by meeting the Hurriyat leaders.

Natwar Singh, however, significantly added that the government's handling of the press was poor.

"And, we would like to question the government as to why did they not raise the issue of nuclear control?" he said.

Natwar Singh also said that Sushma Swaraj's press briefings were uncalled for.

He said, "It was a very foolish thing to do on part of Sushma. We have a MEA spokesperson Nirupama Rao who is experienced and seasoned. Why did Sushma speak out of turn?"

He said Sushma Swaraj's controversial press briefing gave Musharraf the opportunity to go to town about Pakistan's position on the Kashmir issue, leading to a hardening of the Indian stand.

When asked about the allegation that Sushma Swaraj was asked to 'brief' the press by Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani, Singh said, "I don't want to speak on the internal politics of the BJP."

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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