Sonia

New Delhi, July 22: Sonia Gandhi today began taking stock of the controversies over the India-Pakistan joint statement in Egypt and the end-use monitoring pact with the US, amid signs the Congress’s line on the two issues could emerge next week.

The Prime Minister is scheduled to intervene in a Lok Sabha debate on July 29 on “issues emanating from his recent foreign visits”, and Sonia will address Congress MPs on July 30.

Sonia met Pranab Mukherjee and A.K. Antony, the finance and defence ministers, and her political secretary Ahmed Patel this morning to gauge whether the two issues would have a “political fallout” and whether they were as “detrimental” to India as some foreign policy experts and journalists had argued.

Sources said concern was expressed at reports of how the Congress was “upset” with the documents, and it was decided the party would counter the perception. Sonia, Patel, Mukherjee, Antony and home minister P. Chidambaram are to meet Manmohan Singh to carry the discussions forward.

The BJP has slammed the Indo-Pak statement that de-links action on terrorism from the composite dialogue, while the Left and the BJP have both been in uproar over the “arrangement” that allows Washington to inspect military equipment India buys from the US.

Sources said the Congress had two main concerns. One, foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon’s admission that the joint statement was “badly” drafted. Menon was present in Sharm-al-Sheikh, where the statement was signed, as a key member of Singh’s team. “If he admits to something like this, it means the ruling establishment was not on the same page,” a source said.

Sources said the draft cleared by the cabinet committee on security bore no resemblance to the final version.

The Congress’s second worry is that the party may be in for a replay of the Indo-US nuclear deal controversy, when many leaders’ initial responses ranged from hostility to scepticism.

One party lobby says it is time to underline the party-government distinction and not “force the government to look over its shoulder on every policy matter, especially those relating to foreign policy”. The opposite camp believes that the “establishment” (Singh) must not be allowed to take the party for granted and “force” critical decisions on it as a fait accompli.

Others say Singh has acquired enough political savvy to know that as long as he has Sonia and Rahul Gandhi on his side, the Congress would fall in line. “There is no way he would have signed the joint statement without briefing and consulting Sonia and Rahul,” a source said.

Also, just as the nuclear deal had no negative fallout — it did not alienate the Muslims and, instead, won over pro-BJP urban votes — sources said the political ramifications from the US and Pakistan pacts should be seen in the “correct” perspective.

“We are not worried about the impact of the Pakistan statement on the Maharashtra polls, not even in Mumbai. The paradigm will be very local. It will be about bijli, sadak and paani and dal-roti issues,” said Nationalist Congress Party leader and civil aviation minister Praful Patel, who is from Maharashtra.