NEW DELHI, Nov 27: India on Wednesday accused Pakistan’s ISI intelligence unit in Bangladesh of stirring up trouble for New Delhi from Dhaka as lingering fears became more explicit that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee may not visit Islamabad to attend the Saarc summit in January after all.
While Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha targeted Pakistan in a parliamentary discussion for its alleged involvement with separatist militant groups in India’s northeastern states bordering Bangladesh.
Vajpayee’s principal secretary and National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra on the other hand said in a television interview that it would be difficult for the prime minister to visit Islamabad for an entirely another set of reasons rooted in poor economic ties.
“If the ideas put forward in Kathmandu during the Saarc ministerial-level meeting were implemented as agreed to, we could consider being at the summit. But in the absence of any substance to the summit, of course its very difficult for the prime minister to go there,” Mishra said in BBC’s HardTalk programme.
Mr Mishra also admitted that India and Pakistan were “pretty close” to war in January following a December attack on Parliament as also in May this year, in the wake of a major strike on an Army transit camp in Jammu.
He made reiterated that India was prepared to restart negotiations with Pakistan, if it showed sincerity and honoured its pledge to end cross- border terrorism.
Mishra said that Kashmir was not necessarily the end of the matter in Pakistan’s calculations, he claimed that Pakistan’s armed forces could not exist without a confrontation with India. He quoted President Musharraf as having said in 1999, “Even if Kashmir is solved, the relations with India will not be better”.
To a question that India was not seen as a moderate nation, Mr Mishra said: “We are moderate but we will not succumb to any pressure for holding talks with Pakistan.”
Vajpayee’s reluctance to visit Islamabad is being linked to elections in Gujarat next month where Hindu hardliners of his party are targeting Gen Musharraf as a villain. Mishra dismissed suggestions that political or electoral considerations would ever arise in the Prime Minister’s mind if it were a question of going to war.
