India did not clarify its stand in the joint statement and thus allowed Islamabad to point an “invisible finger” at New Delhi for the trouble in Balochistan, they alleged.
The delegation led by leader of Opposition L K Advani asked the President to “intervene” and give “correct advice” to the UPA government on the recent India-Pak joint statement and other recent foreign policy initiatives.
Advani’s reference was to the controversial joint statement that came out after the meeting of the Indian Prime Minister and his Pakistani counterpart Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani at Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt. In a clarification, the foreign secretary had sought to put the blame on “bad drafting.”
To this, the NDA delegation said the statement of the foreign secretary that it was a badly drafted text “reduces India’s diplomacy to a laughing stock.”
“The truth is that it is a case of bad policy and not just of bad drafting,” the memorandum said. Advani said though India always had independent foreign policy, “foreign pressure” was visible in the recent developments. Besides mentioning Balochistan, the memorandum also raised serious objections to the statement “delinking” terrorism from the composite dialogue process.
Advani said that till now there was a consensus inside and outside Parliament that until Pakistan took “satisfactory steps” in combating terrorism, there could be no progress in talks.
Similarly, Balochistan— which had never been mentioned in any talks—has found a place in the statement, he said.
The manner in which it has been mentioned in the joint statement gives the impression that we are “doing something” there, he said.
The issues of climate change, the United States inspection on nuclear enrichment and reprocessing technologies and imposition of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty through the back door on India were also brought up by the delegation in its memorandum.
DH News Service