Taking a different line from his party and senior party colleagues, sitting Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday said it is “impossible” that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would ask the US President Donald Trump or anyone else to mediate on Kashmir.
“Meri koi shikawat nahi hae (I don’t have any complaint),” Mr Tharoor told reporters here.
“Yeh na mumkin hae ki Modi aisa poocch sakta hae (Impossible that Modi will ask anyone else because it’s our clear policy that we don’t want a 3rd party mediation. If we’ve to talk to Pak,we’ll do that directly. Even the language between two countries is the same),” said Mr Tharoor, a former Union Minister.
Tharoor’s stance is different from his colleague Anand Sharma, deputy Congress leader in the Rajya Sabha, who said Prime Minister Modi should make a statement in Parliament and clarify on the matter.
Congress media in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted in the morning and said: “When will our PM ‘wake up’ and call the bluff if President Trump is lying? Or Did PM Modi ask @POTUS
to mediate?”.
BJP reacted angrily to the US President Donald Trump’s remarks on Kashmir and said such statements only underscores “the biggest problem in the US system”.
“POTUS’ statement on Kashmir underscores the biggest problem in the US system today,” tweeted BJP general secretary Ram Madhav.
Another BJP leader Sheshadri Chari and former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh have also flayed the statement from the US President.
Tharoor tweeted on Monday late evening: “I honestly don’t think Trump has the slightest idea of what he’s talking about. He has either not been briefed or not understood what (Prime Minister) Modi was saying or what India’s position is on 3rd-party mediation”.
