PM briefs President on summit

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JULY 13. The Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, called on the President, Mr K. R. Narayanan, today. Over a 45- minute meeting, Mr. Vajpayee briefed him on the summit starting tomorrow with Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf.

Mr. Vajpayee also had a round of last-minute meetings on the preparations for the summit. The Governor of Jammu and Kashmir called on him in this connection.

Speaking in Srinagar, the Chief Minister, Dr. Farooq Abdullah expressed the hope that Mr. Vajpayee would take up the issue of cross-border terrorism forcefully with the General. The people wanted an end to the gun culture, he said.

The former Foreign Secretary, Mr. Jagat Mehta (who was the Foreign Secretary when Mr. Vajpayee was the Foreign Affairs Minister), was sent for by the Prime Minister today. A number of issues came up for discussion. Later, officials of the Prime Minister's Office described the meeting as ``very useful''.

Throughout the day there were consultations with the Union Home Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, and the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh.

Despite the hectic schedule and the irritations that have come from ``the other side'' it seems that the Prime Minister is completely relaxed. As one official suggested, ``He did not allow himself to be provoked even when sharp questions were asked by Pakistani journalists who interviewed him yesterday on the Hurriyat, alleged American pressure on India, Siachen and Kashmir.''

The Government, it seems, is not going to be provoked into making any retaliatory or hawkish noises. Although today there was harsh reaction from the Congress to the reported interview given by Gen. Musharraf to a Gulf newspaper where he had rejected the Shimla Accord and the Lahore Declaration (that was how the agencies reported it), sources close to Mr. Vajpayee said that it was not being viewed by the Government as a ``rejection'' of the two accords by Pakistan. The explanation was that Gen. Musharraf had only stated that the two agreements had failed to produce results because they had not addressed the ``core'' issue of Kashmir.

The Government is trying to explain away the unpleasant rhetoric that is coming from Islamabad as less to do with the summit and more to do with the ``home compulsions'' of the General and the need to address constituencies like the Hurriyat, the jehadis and the fundamentalists.

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