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ShareNew Delhi: The Congress hopes that prime minister Manmohan Singh's intervention in Parliament on July 29 and Congress president Sonia Gandhi's address to the parliamentary partywill help blow away the crisis over the joint statement with Pakistan.
On Monday, the party issued a statement indicating that the gap between the government and itself was narrowing down on the issue. "The Congress is confident that when Singh speaks in parliament, he will set at rest all questions, apprehensions and speculation relating to the Indo-Pakistan joint statement at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt," all-India Congress committee general secretary Janardan Dwivedi said.
The party's decision to come out with a statement two days ahead of Singh's statement is a follow-up to the core committee meeting on Friday, where the PM explained his position. The Congress believes that it is time to shed its diffidence and not allow the opposition to derive political mileage.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has indicated that it plans to a make a big issue out of the joint statement, and on Tuesday it plans to petition president Pratibha Patil.
Singh's statement will be crucial, and senior political party managers and Singh himself are working on its contents to ensure that it allays apprehensions. "Discussions are on at the highest level to ensure we get the wording right," said a senior Congress minister involved in the exercise.
The party view is that while it will be difficult to support the language of the joint statement, the government and the Congress need to move quickly to sensitise domestic public opinion on the issue of decoupling terrorism from the composite dialogue, while the reference to Baluchistan can be handled on a longer term basis.
"It's easier to wriggle out of the first part of the statement than the reference to Baluchistan," a senior party leader said.
