Tuesday, Oct 08, 2002
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By Amit Baruah
Addressing a cheering crowd of young Indian professionals, Mr. Vajpayee said the people of Kashmir had given a clear answer that they wanted to live with India. Candidates and activists belonging to the National Conference had been the target of violence during the polls. Launching a sharp attack on Pakistan and its President, Pervez Musharraf, he said Pakistan did not have democracy and did not care about it. Its leaders like Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had not been allowed to participate in the elections. The world had not seen a dictatorship like the one in Pakistan. "Apne haathon se mukut pehna liya'' (he anointed himself the leader), the Prime Minister said in Hindi about the General. ``This will not last long,'' Mr. Vajpayee said about the current state of affairs in Pakistan. He had got on to a bus and gone to Lahore in 1999, but the bus got "punctured''. There was precious little he could do once the bus was punctured. When he was travelling to Lahore, Gen. Musharraf as the Army Chief was plotting to attack India, Mr. Vajpayee said, making it clear that trusting the General would be a tall order for him. This was a big betrayal, at a time when he had carried a message of cooperation. After Lahore failed, he even invited the General to Agra hoping that the Taj — the monument to love — would move the Pakistani leader. Gen. Musharraf, however, insisted that what was going on in Kashmir was a "freedom struggle" and not terrorism and on account of this the dialogue at Agra failed. Pakistan had made all possible efforts to ensure that polls did not take place in Kashmir. There had been no elections in Pakistan, but it was demanding that the will of the people in Kashmir should be exercised (in the form of a plebiscite). Turning to other issues, the Prime Minister said that it was a "miracle'' that a 24-party coalition Government was working in New Delhi. He had been told that such a coalition could not be run but his response was that "you need the right people to run a coalition." The coalition would not break until they (the BJP) broke it. The Congress was a platform not a party and he, too, had been arrested during the Quit India movement in 1942. Referring to the communists, he said they were in a poor shape and were confined to West Bengal and Kerala. In an interview to Politis, a Cypriot newspaper, Mr. Vajpayee said that if Pakistan ended its sponsorship of cross-border terrorism, then India was willing to resume a dialogue on all issues, including Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan, he said, had to understand that there could not be double standards on terrorism — it could not fight terrorism to its west and sponsor it to its east. "Its (Pakistan's) membership in the international coalition against terrorism cannot be used as a cover for terrorist activities directed against India." On the Cyprus issue, Mr. Vajpayee made it clear that India's supported the sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of Cyprus. "Our position remains unchanged that a solution to the Cyprus problem has to be in conformity with the U.N. resolutions and in the best interests of the Cypriot people. We are also aware that Cyprus is now very close to fulfilling its aspirations to join the European Union, and our best wishes are with you in this endeavour.''
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