Kolkata, April 22 (Inditop) “Good sense has prevailed,” quipped External Affairs Minister and Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee as he Wednesday welcomed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani’s comment that the India-US civilian nuclear deal will not be scrapped if his party came to power.
Mukherjee recalled that the BJP had earlier said it would renegotiate the deal if it formed a government.
“But they are not going to form the government. So I am not worried about what they are going to do,” he told reporters here.
To a query about Advani’s description of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as weak, he said: “I don’t think we need a wrestler as prime minister. And also to be the prime minister one need not use strong words”.
Replying to the BJP’s criticism of the Congress-led government’s response to the recent terrorist attacks, he said after the parliament attack in 2001, the then BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had used strong terms like “hot pursuit” and “aar paar ki ladai”.
“There was a huge army deployment in the (India-Pakistan) border and landmines were buried. They spent several hundred crores of rupees. But within three months the men were brought back.
“But as far as the landmines are concerned, several innocent farmers died three-four years later as the demining operations were not fully effective,” he said.
On the contrary, Mukherjee pointed out, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has succeeded in building up international opinion against Pakistan after the Nov 26 Mumbai terrorist strikes.
“And for the first time after independence, the Pakistan foreign minister has admitted that the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks came from Pakistan,” he said.
rounak