Following the deadlock at the recent meeting of the Indo-Pak joint mechanism on counter-terrorism, the BJP has targeted one of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cherished concepts by asking for the set-up to be scrapped.

The Prime Minister, in reply, told Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L K Advani, “We do not believe in conducting diplomacy in public and have conveyed our positions on these questions through appropriate channels.”

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Advani had said that at a time when Pakistan was being regarded as the “‘crucible of terrorism’, your concept of a joint mechanism is rendered aberrant and beyond comprehension”.

It also questioned New Delhi’s apparently weak response to Pakistani allegations at the meeting regarding India’s human-rights record in Jammu and Kashmir and its involvement in Balochistan.

Suggesting that the mechanism was working to India’s disadvantage, Advani pointed out how the Pakistanis, for the first time at a structured meeting, had made the “outrageous” claim that India was involved in Balochistan as a sponsor of terrorism, even presenting a dossier in support. The Indians, he said, should have rejected this outright but did not.

In his reply to Advani on Wednesday, Manmohan Singh declined to discuss details. His response stressed the importance of the peace initiatives and the need to explore “creative and cooperative solutions” while it was also essential that Pakistan honour its commitment to India given in January 2004, when the NDA was in power, that it would dismantle the terror infrastructure there.

... contd.