Centre must call all-party meet on Pakistan
The close to a fortnight-long encounter in Keran in Jammu & Kashmir clearly demonstrates that the Congress-led UPA Government's weak-kneed policy on Pakistan has failed to work, and that it must be junked and replaced with a robust one which is built on national consensus. Given this backdrop, Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh's demand that the Government call an all-party meeting to discuss the issue, is entirely justified. The situation demands a bipartisan approach that is rooted in ground realities and not based on romantic notions which certain members of the Congress and the Union Government nurture on India's relations with Pakistan. The soft approach hasn't worked, despite the best efforts of this regime and the claim of the new Government in Islamabad led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that it sincerely wants to improve ties with its neighbour. It is pointless to continue debating whether Mr Sharif is his own man or whether the Army in Pakistan calls the shots. The end result is that we have seen countless incidents of breach of the ceasefire agreement along the line of Control by the other side and infiltration bids by militants with the assistance of the Pakistani Army from across the border. The much-hyped recent meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mr Sharif in New York has done nothing to improve matters. left to itself, the Manmohan Singh regime is unlikely to act tough. Perhaps the pressure of an all-party deliberation will prod the Government to respond forcefully. The Centre can no longer treat the matter as its exclusive domain. It involves the issue of national security. Pakistan thrives in the knowledge that the regime in New Delhi is a lame duck one led by an ineffective Prime Minister. The message which an all-party meeting will send is that political parties in India are united in their endeavour to teach Pakistan a befitting lesson. The outcome of such a deliberation will have more meaning than the symbolic anti-Pakistan resolutions which Parliament has adopted in recent times as a counter to similar moves from Pakistan.
Besides, the UPA Government must take the people into confidence on what went wrong for the Keran encounter to happen. Media reports have quoted Indian Army sources to say that close to 40 terrorists had attempted to cross the loC in the sector with the assistance of the Pakistani Army. The gravity of the situation cannot be lost on anyone; it's been close to 15 days since Indian jawans have been courageously battling the crisis. An all-party meeting must deliberate on what might have gone wrong at our end and also what must be done to prevent similar recurrences. In any other country, the Government of the day would have called for such a meeting and the head of the Government would have addressed the people on the crisis. But the Prime Minister is silent and his Ministers are evasive at worst and ambivalent at best. What is worrisome is the growing perception among many experts that the Indian Army is increasingly finding itself leashed and that it cannot act appropriately as a result of the Government's pusillanimity. It is dangerous if the effectiveness of our Army is compromised at the altar of cowardly diplomacy.