BJP asks Pranab to cancel Pak visit

NEW DELHI: After Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Sriprakash Jaiswal said there was an ISI hand in killings of Hindi-speaking migrants in Assam, the BJP has asked Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee to cancel his proposed visit to Islamabad.

The party's stand is significant as it threw the first spanner on Indo-Pak relations after the recent luncheon meeting that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had with the top Opposition leaders including former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Leader of Opposition L K Advani, his counterpart in Rajya Sabha Jaswant Singh and former National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra.

Ahead of the foreign minister's visit to Pakistan, the top leadership in the government sought to take the BJP into confidence on relations with Pakistan.

BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad de-linked the party's opposition to the Pranab visit to Islamabad with the Prime Minister's luncheon meeting with top BJP leaders.

"The minister was sent as a home ministry's representative to Assam to assess the situation. So when he says that there is ISI involvement in the killings of non-Assamese, we have to take it seriously," the BJP said.