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| Jaswant's reentry in BJP a good omen for Indo-Pak talks | | | ABID SHAH
EARLY TIMES REPORT
NEW DELHI, June 24: Jaswant Singh's reentry in the Bharatiya Janata Party today somehow signifies a good omen for Indo-Pak relations. Somehow, this has happened on a day when Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan, Nirupama Rao and Salman Bashir, met in Islamabad.
Not just that the meeting of the bosses of Foreign Offices of the two countries turned out this time to be far better than similar interactions held between the two in the past but also the fact that the BJP that is the main Opposition party back home has also decided to forego its objections to Jaswant Singh's book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, by taking the writer who has been an old BJP hand back in the party has its own significance. As both these developments coincide what cannot be missed is that it was the BJP that had taken great umbrage to Manmohan Singh's decision to revive talks with Pakistan about a year ago when he met his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani at Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt and issued a joint declaration to resume dialogue between the tow countries. The dialogue process between India and Pakistan had to be put in the cold after a public outcry was made on Manmohan Singh's return from his visit to Egypt after attending the summit of the leaders of Non-aligned countries at Sharm el Sheikh.
Soon after this the controversy over Jaswant Singh's book on Jinnah erupted leading in his expulsion from the BJP. Ten months after this the party has decided to take Singh back into its fold and its top leaders expressed happiness and a sense of relief over his reentry in the party. Yet, Jaswant Singh said here today at a media interaction on his reentry in the BJP that he stood by what he said about Jinnah in his book.
Jaswant Singh's book was earlier described by BJP as too soft on Jinnah and Pakistan and against the party's view on the subject according to which Jinnah was main architect of Pakistan. Asked about this by media persons here today, Singh said that history did not change even if one disagreed with it.
Obviously, after today's developments in the BJP, the party can hardly be expected to up its ante against the Government's move to engage Pakistan into talks to mend long drawn hostilities between the two countries.
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