Jaishankar a friend and able foreign minister, didn't advise him to...: Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor said he earlier advised Jaishankar to cool a little bit but that's not for incident like Indian Flag being lowered by Khalistanis.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Saturday said he has no difference of opinion with external affairs minister S Jaishankar over Jaishankar's reaction to the incident of Khalistanis pulling the Indian Flag down in London. "I regard him (Jaishankar) as a friend and a skilled and able foreign minister," Shashi Tharoor said. Explaining the context of his tweet, Tharoor said he has been informed that his 'cool-off' advice to Jaishankar which he gave earlier has been misconstrued and misinterpreted as Tharoor advised Jaishankar to cool off when the flag incident took place.

Shashi Tharoor said he agreed with Jaishankar's outburst when Indian Flag was lowered by Khalistanis in London.

" Friends have forwarded me a message doing the rounds from the usual trolls claiming that my advice to EAM @DrSJaishankar to “cool it” was over his reaction to the incident of the Khalistanis pulling our flag down outside the Indian Embassy.

It wasn’t.

When that incident occurred I expressed outrage even before MEA did, since I was accosted by cameras at the Lok Sabha as soon as it happened. Outrage was indeed the most appropriate response," Tharoor tweeted.

"It’s not our style to poke our fingers in the eyes of foreign countries without provocation. The flag incident was a provocation & India’s response was fitting," Tharoor tweeted adding, "Let’s keep our foreign policy bipartisan. We are all Indians & all that matters should be our national interest."

Did Tharoor advise Jaishankar to 'cool a little bit'?

In April, Shashi Tharoor made a remark about Jaishankar's statement that the West has a bad habit of commenting on other countries. Tharoor said he thought that Jaishankar was being thin-skinned to be provoked easily. "I have known him for a long time and consider him as a friend but on this issue, I think we need not be so thin-skinned, I think it's very important that as a government we take something in stride," Tharoor said.

Tharoor's advice came after Jaishankar berated the West -- at a gathering in Bengaluru before the Karnataka Assembly Election -- where he said there are two reasons why West comments on India. "It is because the West has a bad habit of commenting on others. They somehow think it is some kind of Gd-given right," Jaishankar said.