Congress attacks Advani’s foreign policy comment

Taking a jibe at BJP prime ministerial candidate L K Advani, who vowed that the NDA would pursue a “muscular” foreign policy if voted to power, Congress on Tuesday said the “visits (of Advani) to the gym is taking an effect”.

“It seems all the visits to the gym is having an effect on him,” party spokesman Manish Tewari said here, referring to the 81-year-old BJP leader recently inaugurating a gymnasium developed by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.

Further attacking, Tewari said the term “muscular foreign policy” has its genesis in a Nazi doctrine after they tore the treaty of Versailles.

The spokesman alleged that the previous six-years of NDA rule did not demonstrate any “muscularity” at all.

“When he (Advani) became the Home Minister in 1998, he was a great votary of Hot Pursuit. As he spent time in the North Block, hot became cold and pursuit disappeared,” Tewari said.

He asked, “where was the muscularity when the Kargil intrusion was allowed to take place, when surrender of national interest took place in Kandahar, when they were ready to sign the CRBT...”.

The Congress leader claimed that UPA’s foreign policy was based on the premise of “securing and furthering the strategic and national security of India”.