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By Our Special Correspondent
The President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, flanked by the Lok Sabha Speaker, Manohar Joshi, and the Vice-President, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, followed by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, arriving to attend the inaugural session of the International Parliamentary Conference in New Delhi on Wednesday. — Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
Addressing the three-day international parliamentary conference, being held at the Central Hall to mark the golden jubilee of the Indian Parliament, he wanted the delegates from 85 countries to exercise their diverse experiences to find solutions to several complex issues facing parliamentary democracies. ``Together we have a wealth of experience from which to devise solutions to the challenges before us'. He asked them to consider whether there were ways to ensure stability of governance and policies, while retaining the vibrancy of multi-party democracy. In an apparent reference to the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharaff, he remarked that coups, bloody power struggles and military takeovers have become anathema to the world. ``Even rulers in khaki have felt the need to seek some kind of democratic legitimacy'' he said. The President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, inaugurating the meet, called for visionary policies for global prosperity and a global outlook for universal harmony. He said poverty, illiteracy and unemployment were driving the forces of anger, frustration and violence. ``These forces link themselves to historical enmity, tyranny, and injustice, ethnic issues and religious fundamentalism, and transform themselves into outbursts of terrorism worldwide''. He called for ``policies with vision at the global level and a sharing of resources under a consortium approach for peaceful co-existence and co-development''. The Lok Sabha Speaker, Manohar Joshi asked parliamentarians to help bring about effective legislation to combat terrorism, and to safeguard democracy from those trying to destroy its foundations. Citing the September 11 strikes in the U.S., the December 13 terrorist attack on Indian Parliament, and the attacks in Moscow and Bali, he said they demonstrated that democracies and plural and open societies were vulnerable. The Vice President, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat said the conference should be used as an opportunity for serious introspection about the challenges being faced by the free world and democracies. The former Presidents, R. Venkataraman and K.R. Narayanan, former Prime Ministers, P.V. Narasimha Rao and I.K. Gujral, and the Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi, also attended the function.
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