New Delhi, March 28: George Fernandes has asserted that L.K. Advani did attend the meeting of ministers which decided Jaswant Singh should fly to Kandahar with the terrorists to be traded off for the passengers of a hijacked Indian plane.

The veteran ally’s remarks left the BJP speechless days after Advani had claimed he was initially unaware of the controversial decision, and came to know of it at the last minute.

“Yes, all of us were present,” Fernandes, the National Democratic Alliance convener, told interviewer Karan Thapar when asked whether Advani was at the meeting.

Fernandes was defence minister and Advani home minister in December 1999 when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government decided that foreign minister Jaswant should accompany the freed militants to Afghanistan.

When Thapar mentioned Advani’s recent claim, Fernandes suggested the BJP leader might not have been at the meeting “at that point of time” and said he didn’t think Advani was “lying”.

But when the interviewer suggested that Advani’s recollections could be faulty, the Janata Dal (United) leader, according to the transcript, said: “Yes, that can happen.”

BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar refused to answer questions relating to the interview, to be telecast on CNN-IBN’s Devil’s Advocate on Sunday. The party had on Monday endorsed the version of Advani, now its shadow Prime Minister.

Fernandes’s remarks will provide ammunition to the Congress, which has anyway ripped into Advani’s claim.

Some BJP leaders expressed anguish at the ageing and ailing NDA convener’s “indiscretion”. They tried to play down the remarks, saying Fernandes’s memory has been failing him.

But many party leaders admitted in private that Advani’s attempt to wash off the Kandahar blot had breathed fresh life into the dying controversy. They declined to be quoted, saying it was for Advani to set the record straight.

Some in the party see a possible escape hatch in Fernandes’s suggestion that Advani may not have been at the meeting when the decision was taken.

Earlier, the BJP, asked how a home minister could have been so badly out of the loop, had claimed that Advani had indeed been part of the decision to free the terrorists but the meeting had not discussed the details of their Kandahar trip.

Advani, projected as a strong leader concerned about national security, has been at pains to disown the Kandahar capitulation. His recent “revelation” came after a failed whisper campaign about his opposition to the militants’ release.