Sonia challenges Advani on Kandhar

Baneshwardham, April 03: Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday questioned BJP leader L K Advani`s statement that he was not aware of the decision to send his Cabinet colleague Jaswant Singh on the plane with dreaded terrorists to Kandahar and wondered whether he was not trusted by the then Prime Minister on the issue. "Now the then Home Minister of NDA says he was not aware of it (Jaswant Singh accompany terrorists). If he was not aware of it, why did this happen? "What are we to understand? that the NDA Prime Minister did not trust him. Why so,?," she asked at a public meeting on the banks of the confluence of rivers Som, Mashi and Jakham in Dungarpur district during a short visit to this pilgrim centre for tribals. Picking on the contradictory statements from the NDA camp on the issue, Gandhi referred to former Defence Minister George Fernandes` statement that Advani was in the know of the Kandahar decision and asked why the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has "not broken her silence". "Who is speaking the truth and who is not. Why are they hiding the truth?," asked Gandhi, whom Advani met on the day of `Holi` and gave her a copy of his recently-published auto-biography in a meeting that was meant to bring a thaw in their relations. Attacking the BJP, the UPA chairperson said BJP talked about nationalism and terrorism but did not anything about it. "I want to know which party pandered to terrorists and sent them away to Afghanistan. It was not the UPA but the BJP." Bureau Report

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Can Sonia Gandhi categorically say that if she was the Prime Minister then she would not have released terrorists to save 180 Indians taken hostage? Whether Jaswant Singh travelled in the same plane as the terrorists or in a different plane is a non-issue, sought to be made out as a big issue by a Congress which had no role to play then. - K.Venugopal - Mumbai