New Delhi, May 10: Congress today attacked the BJP-led coalition over national security advisor Brajesh Mishra's proposal of a strategic partnership between India, US and Israel to fight international terrorism and warned it against upsetting consensus on foreign policy in the country. "Obsession with Israel on the part of the NDA government is strange and perverse....When Israel is facing international isolation. It shows intellectual insolvency of the NDA government," party spokesman S Jaipal Reddy told reporters.
Noting that strategic partnership with Israel was "qualitatively different" from that between India and US, he said that Mishra would not (not) have pleaded for such an alliance without prior clearance from the prime minister. He said that Mishra's statement was "not inadvertent" as Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani had also put forward a similar formulation after Sept. 11 terrorist strikes in US.
Mishra, who is currently on visit to US, had said that as targets of international terrorism, democratic nations India, US and Israel should form an alliance to combat the scourge and develop multilateral mechanism to counter it. He had said the three countries "have to jointly face the same ugly face of modern day terrorism" and "such an alliance would have the political will and moral authority to take bold decisions in extreme cases of terrorist provocation." Bureau Report