NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former National
Security Advisor M K Narayanan held different opinions about talks with
Pakistan, a cable released by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has
revealed.
The former NSA has described Dr Singh as a "great
believer" in talks and negotiations with Islamabad, while Narayanan
himself was "not a great believer in Pakistan".
He added that
after the prime minister spoke about India’s "shared destiny" with
Pakistan, he told the PM "you have a shared destiny, we don’t".
WikiLeaks also reveals that India and Pakistan had through "back channels" agreed to a non-territorial solution to Kashmir.
An
agreement to this effect was reportedly reached between Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh and then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
According
to the US embassy cable -- dated April 21, 2009 -- Dr Singh confirmed
this to a visiting United States delegation, led by then House Foreign
Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman in April, 2009, saying the
solution included free trade and movement across Line of Control.
Dr
Singh told the US delegation that Delhi and Islamabad had made great
progress prior to February 2007, before President Pervez Musharraf ran
into trouble.
After a series of blunders, WikiLeaks on Friday
dumped its entire archive of 251, 287 unfiltered and unedited secret US
diplomatic cables online, drawing an angry response from its media
collaborators. Online
