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A Day after delivering a hawkish
speech to the members of the BJP national executive, Prime Minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee today said he was not under any pressure from either his
party
or any constituent of the NDA to
call off his Islamabad visit.
''I don't work under any pressure,'' he told correspondents in Bhubaneswar after surveying the flood-hit areas of Orissa. He said he had accepted the invitation of General Pervez Musharraf but the timing and venue of his visit to Pakistan was yet to be decided.
The PM's comments indicate that despite the stern warning issued in the political resolution adopted by the national executive of his party yesterday, he has not closed the doors for further talks with Pakistan. The resolution had urged the government to ''draw appropriate conclusions and plan accordingly'' if Pakistan continued to adopt a ''negative'' posture on the issue of cross-border terrorism. This was seen as a hint to Vajpayee to not visit Pakistan unless Musharraf was ready to discuss terrorism.
Today, official sources sought to play down the hard line that seemed to emerge from yesterday's session of the national executive meet. The sources said that some of the remarks attributed to the PM by BJP leaders yesterday were exaggerated.
They said the remarks give a misleading
idea of what the PM said. Vajpayee was simply sharing with his party colleagues
his impressions of his talks with the General. According to sources, Vajpayee
said Musharraf left with a feeling of sadness that he had not succeeded
in getting India to admit that Kashmir was the central issue in Indo-Pak
relations.
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