Balochistan blunder leaves govt speechless in parliament

The Manmohan Singh government is finding it hard to whitewash the controversial Indo-Pak joint statement signed at Sharm El-Sheikh.

A day after Singh valiantly tried to defend the bungling at Egypt, the government was at a loss to explain how the reference to Balochistan had crept into the document, defying many years of gatekeeping by previous establishments.

Even a seasoned man like Pranab Mukherjee, who intervened in the debate on Thursday, had no answers to questions from LK Advani, Yashwant Sinha and Sushma Swaraj of the BJP.

A spirited opposition led by the BJP staged a walkout after expressing its dissatisfaction with the reply. The Samajwadi Party joined them later.

When external affairs minister SM Krishna rose to wind up the discussion, the government’s defence totally collapsed amid jeers from opposition benches. “Why don’t you go to Balochistan before you go to Sri Lanka?’’ some MPs asked an embarrassed Krishna.

Even a spirited intervention by Mukherjee failed to convince the opposition about the government’s motive on the B-factor, and delinking terror from bilateral talks.
“This is a unilateral reference and when you describe it as unilateral, we are not a party to it. This is Pakistan’s perception. It is not shared by us,” Mukherjee said as the BJP and other parties continued protesting.

Mukherjee said India had nothing to do with Balochistan as it was against exporting terrorism. “We are victims of terror. We do not export terrorism to any country, nor do we have any intention to do. It is against our principles,” he said.

After Krishna said that “we readily agreed to include Balochistan because we have nothing to hide”, leader of opposition LK Advani called it a “strange argument”.