NEW DELHI, Dec 19: Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee slammed his party on Wednesday for whipping up war hysteria over last week’s terrorist attack on Delhi’s Parliament House, but he also urged the United States to tell Pakistan to do its bit to avoid a potentially debilitating conflict.
“We cannot take a decision on war or peace on the spur of an emotional moment, nor is whipping up hysteria the right approach,” Vajpayee told the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, even as a string of reminders arrived from Washington to avert an armed conflict with Pakistan at this point in time.
Vajpayee’s response to Washington was polite, yet firm: “I would urge those who counsel patience to us, to tell our neighbour to do the same, to nudge it to take decisive steps against terrorists it harbours.”
Emphasising that last week’s attack was a well-planned conspiracy to destabilise the country, the Prime Minister said India would explore all options to root out this menace. “All options should be evaluated properly and they have to be well-thought out, but at the same time all efforts should be made to avert a war,” he said.
In his mellow moments, Vajpayee’s remarks appeared to target Home Minister Lal Krishan Advani’s war rhetoric too. Advani had spoken of possible hot pursuit across the border to hunt terrorists and their alleged camps there, saying this was the call of the people of India. The hard-line approach towards Pakistan is almost always advocated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Vajpayee said war or peace was not an issue to be decided by any one party.
Significantly he singled out Congress leader Sonia Gandhi for praise, an unusual gesture, for adopting what he said was a constructive approach to the crisis triggered by Thursday’s terrorist attack on parliament. Gandhi has promised her party’s support to the government in its quest to bring terrorists to justice, but in a speech in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, she stopped short of endorsing war as an option.
Expressing happiness that the entire polity in the country was united in this hour of “challenge,” Vajpayee said the very fact that Congress president Sonia Gandhi called him to inquire after his welfare immediately after Thursday’s attack showed democracy in the country was strong. “When leader of the Opposition is worried about the well-being of the Prime Minister, what was the worry for Indian democracy. It is not in peril,” Vajpayee said adding that even on Wednesday the nation’s interest was uppermost in the minds of political parties.
Vajpayee’s comments appeared to suggest that the main opposition party had gained some unspecified assurances from the government following which the Lok Sabha’s winter session was closed, two days ahead of schedule.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan said the government was planning unspecified tough action against terrorist targets and the political parties did not wish to be seen having different views on that.
It was not clear if there was a hint of any cross-border adventurism in the envisaged action. If there was, the army and India’s fairly open defence think-tank did not appear to be too keen on it.
INDIAN ARMY CHIEF: In his first reaction since the attack on parliament, Army Chief General Padmanabhan has said that his forces are carefully monitoring the deployment of Pakistani armoured formations across the international border in Jammu and India would not be provoked into a reaction.
“There is a build-up on the other side. They have moved certain forces in there. Certain forces that should have gone back have not gone back. We are watching what is happening across with a great deal of interest,” he told the Star News channel. Informed politicians told Dawn that Padmanabhan had briefed the government about the possibility of an all-out war becoming inevitable if India does indeed go for targeting militants across the border.
Asked whether an action plan had been worked out, the Army Chief said: “I don’t say yes and I don’t say no as well. The Army has a clear idea of where we are going and what we are doing. We are not a flappy Army. We are a very confident army. We know our strength, our objectives, we know precisely what we have to do and we are fully capable of looking after all these things.”
Star News said there were unconfirmed reports that India was countering the Pakistani deployment by repositioning its own tank units in Punjab to forward positions.
Apart from the army’s advice, it was the word form Washington that was weighing in heavily against war as a response to the attack on the Parliament House.
Soon after the Dec 13 attack, US President George Bush had contacted Vajpayee over the phone to say that the entire international community, including Pakistan, had criticized the attack which, the US president said, was a “good sign”, Vajpayee said in his 20-minute intervention to the discussion on the terrorist attack.
Vajpayee said he told Bush in clear terms that the terrorists who attacked Parliament had links with Islamabad and were abetted by Pakistan. To members’ plea for restraint in dealing with the challenging issue, he said though these sentiments should be respected, “We should also keep the sentiments of the people in mind,” he said.
With the war of words between India and Pakistan escalating with each passing day, people in Kashmir now fear a military confrontation between the two sides. While the separatist leaders say that such an action will hamper the dialogue process, the man on the streets fears that a response by India will mean that they will be at the receiving end.
JKLF CHIEF: Kashmir’s pro-freedom Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) said it was worried that the attack on the Parliament House could adversely affect future peace talks. “Whosoever has done it, they are not sympathizers of the Kashmiri freedom struggle. I don’t think these kinds of attacks should derail the dialogue process. We have condemned it and we ask that in this time of adversity, both Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf exercize restraint and cooperate with each other,” JKLF chief Yasin Malik said.
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