Tharoor-led group to ‘sensitise’ US opinion
The delegation will also resist any attempt to equate the prime ministers of India and Pakistan, and even mention efforts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to broker peace in the Ukraine War
A multi-party delegation led by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor will “sensitise” public, government and parliamentary opinion in the US about the “horrendous cross-border terrorism” faced by India and stick to New Delhi’s stand that no third party mediated the May 10 ceasefire between the two countries, people aware of developments said on Friday.
Tharoor’s group – which also contains Lok Janshakti Party MP Shambhavi Choudhary, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MP Sarfaraz Ahmad, Telugu Desam Party leader Harish Balayogi, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Shashank Mani Tripathi, Tejaswi Surya and Bhubaneswar Kalita, Shiv Sena leader Milind Deora, and former US ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu – is headed for the US, Guyana, Colombia, Panama and Brazil.
The delegation will also resist any attempt to equate the prime ministers of India and Pakistan, and even mention efforts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to broker peace in the Ukraine War, said the people cited above.
The delegation is set to leave on Saturday night, and its engagements will also include a visit to the 9/11 memorial in New York City, said the people cited above. All seven multi-party delegations, headed to 33 countries, are visiting key international capitals, but the meetings in the US assume greater interest as it comes against the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s claims that he used trade to stop the India-Pakistan conflict.
Foreign secretary Vikram Misri on Friday briefed four delegations—led by Tharoor, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Supriya Sule and BJP leader Baijayant Panda.
During the briefing, one MP is believed to have asked Misri about the response to any potential question about a loss of Indian fighter jets. Last week, during a meeting of the parliamentary committee on external affairs, Misri was asked a similar question to which he responded that only the defence ministry would be able to reply on the matter.
“My delegation is going to five countries. Others are going to other countries. And throughout our message is to let them know of the horrendous terrorism to which India has been subject since at least 1989 from across the border,” Tharoor said.
“And I think it becomes very important for that message to find the kind of understanding that we believe in some statements may not have been always apparent. I think we are there to get our point of view across and we will do so in a very constructive way because as far as we are concerned, we are not there to argue with anybody, we are there to explain what exactly is happening in our country and what we have had to do, and why we have found a certain spirit of resolution in how to resolve, how to deal with these terrorist attacks in the future, as we have done just now,” Tharoor added.
The Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram dodged the issue of a rift with his party and said that while debate was a sign of a vibrant democracy, lawmakers speak in one voice when they go abroad. “Politics has its own place in democracy,” Tharoor quipped.
A controversy broke out last weekend after the government named Tharoor and other Congress leaders without the apparent sanction of the party, bypassing three names given by the opposition party.
The delegation to the US, Brazil, Panama, Colombia and Guyana will meet officials in the US government, legislature, think tanks and press, and have public interactions, said Tharoor.
“It’s a full court press. We are really going to try and talk to everybody. And the whole idea is that we would like to sensitise public opinion as well as governmental opinion as well as parliamentary opinion, legislative opinion in each of these countries. So whoever is willing to see us, we are willing to see them and we’ll do what it takes to get our message across,” Tharoor said.
BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, a member of the delegation, said that Modi’s efforts for peace between Russia and Ukraine might be mentioned. He added that the delegation wont accept any attempt to draw a parallel between Modi and Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif. “Anybody who understands India and Pakistan would not make a ridiculous comparison. India is far ahead of Pakistan. Our economy is 11 times that of Pakistan,” he said.
“We will also say that while our PM has told Russia and Ukraine that this is not the era of war, this is also not the era of terrorism. India cannot not respond when it is a subject to terror attack,” Surya added.
Three other delegations — led by Janata Dal (United) leader Sanjay Jha, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader K Kanimozhi and Shiv Sena leader Shrikant Shinde -- have already gone abroad. A senior MP said on Friday that the delegations going to West Asia will highlight how terrorism has affected Muslim countries and urge the countries to stand united with India in the fight against terror.
