Expressing his surprise over the remark made by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in his book In The Line of Fire that both of them felt insulted at the Agra summit, former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said here today “no one insulted the General and certainly no one insulted me”.

“I am still to see the book,” Vajpayee said. However, he issued a statement “just to put the record straight”. The former prime minister attributed the failure of the Agra summit to Musharraf’s position that bloodshed in J-K was “people's battle for freedom”. India, on the other hand, believed there could be no normalcy in its relations with Pakistan until cross-border terrorism ended.

Vajpayee said Musharraf took the stand that the violence taking place in Jammu and Kashmir “could not be described as terrorism”. “He continued to claim that the bloodshed in the state was nothing but the people’s battle for freedom. It was this stand of General Musharraf that India just could not accept,” Vajpayee said. “And this was responsible for the failure of the Agra summit.”

“Pakistan,” according to Vajpayee, “came to our viewpoint when, in the joint statement of January 2004, it agreed that Pakistan Government would not allow Pakistan or any land in its control to be used for purposes of terrorism.” The joint statement of January 2004 became a starting point for the composite dialogue between the two countries. He said, “If General Musharraf had been willing to accept our position in 2000, the Agra summit would have become successful, and the three subsequent years may have proved very valuable to take our initiative forward.”

... contd.