Deriding the claims made by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in his book In the Line of Fire about the Kargil war, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee here said there was “no question of our defeat”.

Earlier, reacting to Musharraf, who has bemoaned the lack of world attention and recognition for Pakistan in his book and referred to India as enemy and the enemy of the US during the Cold War, the Indian defence minister had referred to Pakistan as a “nursery of global terrorism” in a speech he gave at Harvard.

Speaking at a press conference before leaving for India last night, in which both India’s ambassador to the US Ronen Sen and India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Nirupam Sen were present, Mukherjee said, “Throughout the Kargil war and afterwards, Pakistan maintained it was the mujahideen, not their own forces, and now he is backtracking.” He pointed out that Pakistan had indulged in such tactics in all the wars they had fought with India. “In the (19)48 intrusion, in the (19)65 intrusion, in Kargil, Pakistan said they did not have anything to do with it, it was the tribals, the Mujahideen. The world knows otherwise.”

Saying “we cannot change neighbours’’, Mukherjee said though he does not know if Pakistan has won the war against al-Qaeda, he wants them “to be in the forefront in the war against extremists,” adding, with a subtle dig on the issue of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir, “what they are doing on the western front, they do so on the eastern front too.” At the UN General Assembly meet, Mukherjee laughed off Musharraf’s contention that the authority of PM Manmohan Singh was “withering away”, saying, “The PM is fully authorised to carry on the negotiations.”

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