Kanchan Gupta in dailypioneer.com. Posting in full. My apologies if already posted:
Kanchan Gupta
It has been a great week for the Opposition, especially the BJP. The blistering attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ‘grand strategy’ to inveigle himself into the good books of US President Barack Hussein Obama by conceding the demands of America’s puppet regime in Islamabad, his ‘bold leap’ over the dead and the maimed who bear testimony to the limitless brutality of Pakistani jihadis to befriend those who sponsor the shedding of Indian blood, has left him in splendid isolation.
The Congress has refused to endorse what Mr Jaswant Singh has scathingly described as “Alice in Wonderland gobbledygook drafted in Punjabi English, a profound error and a disaster.” Ms Sonia Gandhi has firmly laid down her party’s line against which few would cavil: “We support the resumption of the dialogue process with Pakistan, but only after it has demonstrated its seriousness to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks to justice, and to prevent its territory from being used to launch terror attacks on any part of our country.”
The Sharm el-Sheikh declaration delinking Pakistani terrorism from peace talks lies in tatters, although not entirely abandoned by the Prime Minister who, after offering to “walk more than half the distance”, has been justly accused by Mr Yashwant Sinha of “walking all the way to the Pakistani camp”. The Prime Minister’s long-winded, convoluted, intervention during last Wednesday’s debate on foreign policy in the Lok Sabha may have enthused his admirers, but it has left the vast majority unmoved and not convinced.
A careful scrutiny of his speech will show that he has not said anything remarkably different from what he told Parliament on July 17, a day after the debacle at Sharm el-Sheikh where he met Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. The joint statement issued after the meeting made four substantive points placing Pakistan, the perpetrator of jihadi terrorism, at par with India, the victim of jihadi terrorism; delinking action on terrorism from the composite dialogue process (which includes the ‘Kashmir issue’); transforming Baluchi nationalism/separatism from being Pakistan’s problem into India’s doing; and, pledging the exchange of real time, actionable intelligence on terrorism with Pakistan. While the delinking of terrorism and talks is of deep concern, the inclusion of the ‘B’ word in the joint statement with its implied consequences is alarming.
According to Ahmed Rashid, the author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, and other commentators in the Pakistani media, the inclusion of Baluchistan in the joint statement followed Mr Gilani handing over a dossier to the Prime Minister, containing ‘evidence’ of India’s alleged involvement in fomenting trouble in Baluchistan through its consulates in Afghanistan, and assistance to, of all people, Baitullah Mehsud and his Tehrik-e-Taliban or Pakistani Taliban.
The Prime Minister’s denial of having received any such dossier has not prevented the Pakistanis from launching a concerted propaganda offensive in an effort to paint India as the sponsor of Baluchi ‘terrorism’. The US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Mr Richard Holbrooke, has let it be known that the issue of India’s alleged involvement in fomenting violence in Baluchistan was raised during his recent visit to Islamabad, but no evidence was provided to him.
That means nothing. The history of the US’s involvement in ‘settling’ disputes, from Korea to Nicaragua via Vietnam and later in the Balkans, not to mention Pakistan and Afghanistan, tells us that the Americans are adept in the art of converting fiction into fact if it suits their geostrategic interests. Only those who are blissfully ignorant of American duplicity and are happy to gloss over Pakistani perfidy would flaunt Mr Holbrooke’s comment as ‘evidence’ to prove that the Prime Minister has done no wrong.
But let’s return to the Prime Minister’s intervention in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. He spoke at length, often meandering from point to point and seeking to obfuscate the real issues raised by the Opposition. His response was prepared in advance to address popular concerns. Yet, it was stilted, shorn of sincerity and lacking in clarity. He began with the need to talk to Pakistan, then contradicted himself by saying but we cannot talk to Pakistan unless it takes verifiable measures against terrorism, and concluded by emphasising that the only other option to dialogue is war, which, of course, is not true.
After going through the Prime Minister’s waffle more than once, four questions come to mind. First, the intervention makes little sense, unless it is meant to confound the Opposition and confuse the nation, a tactical ploy used by the Prime Minister to mislead everybody during the negotiations on the flawed India-US nuclear deal. Recall how he promised something in Parliament and did exactly the opposite, again and again, till people lost track. So, the Prime Minister must categorically clarify: Are we going to talk, or not talk to Pakistan? If we talk, will it be meaningful dialogue or casual tittle-tattle?
Does delinking Pakistani terrorism from the composite dialogue process mean: a) Composite dialogue will resume even if Pakistan fails to act against terror emanating from territory under its control, as the joint statement says; b) Pakistan cannot make action against terrorism conditional to the resumption of the composite dialogue, as the Prime Minister says; or, c) India must resume the composite dialogue irrespective of whether or not Pakistan acts against anti-India terrorism, as Mr Gilani interprets it?
Second, what was the compulsion to include Baluchistan in the joint statement? The Prime Minister’s bunkum about India keeping an ‘open book’ means nothing. Third, why is there this sudden turnaround in policy and at whose behest? Has sovereignty been replaced by servility? Fourth, have no lessons been learned from the disastrous experience of trying to set up a Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism with Pakistan? Why have we agreed to share real time, actionable intelligence when this can be used by Pakistan to its advantage and potentially expose our strategic assets?
A last point: The Prime Minister is given to waxing eloquent about the “shared future” of India and Pakistan, as he did on Wednesday. I don’t think democratic, secular India has any ‘shared future’ with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Why indulge in such bogus rhetoric? Or does the Prime Minister actually believe that a terror-sponsoring Islamic state built on the shaky foundation of hate and intolerance, and an open, plural, free society share a common destiny?
This is neither ‘grand strategy’ nor ‘bad drafting’. It is part of a larger, sinister game plan hatched somewhere else, far away from New Delhi, Islamabad and Sharm el-Sheikh. That game plan must be defeated. India cannot be held hostage to an individual’s delusions of grandeur. Nor can the nation’s interests be compromised to appease those for whom India’s security and well-being is of least importance.
by anyone, just observing this point with the evidence given above. Now I read the term "NARROW ANSWER" by Holbrooke very differently. What he said was that Pakistan obviously discussed Balochistan with him, but as for Pakistan giving him evidence of INDIAN interference in Balochistan, "the narrow answer is NO". 
