UPA selling India short: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today accused the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of diluting all the gains made by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in negotiations with Islamabad by allowing Pakistan to state that the core issue in bilateral relations was the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir.

Former Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said the issue would be raised in the Budget Session of Parliament.

He particularly objected to a written statement read out by Pak Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri at a joint press conference with Foreign Minister Natwar Singh. It had undone all that had been achieved at the negotiating table by the NDA government during the January 6, 2004 joint declaration in Islamabad, he said.

"While Singh's statement was consistent with India's line on the bilateral agenda, Kasuri's statement came as a shock," he said.

Quoting from Kasuri's statement he said, "the foreign minister of Pakistan said 'we had discussions on the core issue of J&K and have impressed upon the Indian government for an early and final settlement of the issue as per the aspirations of the people of J&K'," he said.

"The January 6 declaration between Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervej Musharraf had not mentioned the "core issue nor the Kashmiris as a third party to the dispute, the inclusion of this paragraph in Kasuri's statement is a dilution of what had been achieved," he added.

Sinha said it was difficult to believe that the statement had not been read out to the Indian side before being made public, accusing Natwar Singh of selling India short on the negotiating table.

Another issue taken up by Sinha was the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline being treated as a standalone project. "Pakistan is refusing to give India a most favoured nation status, and is eager for the pipeline as they stand to gain $600 million a year as transit fees, yet we refused to press a negotiation advantage," he said.

Overall on the opening of the Srinagar-Muzzafarbad bus service he said the BJP was positive in its outlook. "How can we not welcome something, which is a result of a process initiated by the NDA government," he said.

He said the BJP was worried that under the UPA government, there was a perceptible dilution of all gains made by the NDA, starting with the removal of the word "cross-border terrorism" from a joint statement made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Musharraf to the present joint statement.