Lahore bus, Agra summit were my ideas: Jaswant Singh

LONDON - Former external affairs and defence minister Jaswant Singh says he wants to work for peace in South Asia, claiming it was he who put Atal Bihari Vajpayee on a bus to Lahore and thought of an India-Pakistan summit in Agra.

Singh also said he had no regrets over the controversial hostage swap he ordered to end the 1999 Christmas Eve-hijack of an Indian airlines flight to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and would do it all over again if faced with a similar dilemma.

I will work for peace in South Asia - in Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh - and I want to expand the constituency of peace in our land, Singh told journalists after a launch of the international edition of his book “Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence” in the House of Commons Wednesday.

Declaring South Asia to be in its most perilous state in 62 years, Singh outlined his credentials as a regional peacemaker, saying it was he who came up with the idea that then Prime Minister Vajpayee travel to Lahore in a bus.

Prime ministers don’t ordinarily travel by bus. I suggested to Prime Minster Vajpayee - and it was in New York that this suggestion was made - that ‘why not travel to Lahore by bus’.

Vajpayee then addressed the citizens of Pakistan on television where he said: ‘Bahut ho gaya, ab hamein khoon bahana bandh karna chahiye’ (Enough is enough, let’s end this bloodshed).

Singh said he persisted with peacemaking even though he was betrayed by Pakistan’s subsequent attack on Kargil and terrorist strikes on the Jammu and Kashmir assembly and the parliament.

We persisted. We invited (then Pakistan President) Pervez Musharraf to Agra. Vajpayee said, ‘why are we doing this’? I said ‘insaniyat ke liye (For the sake of humanity)’.

Musharraf engaged in grandstanding in Agra - otherwise we would have achieved something, he added.

Singh also put up a strong defence of his decision to swap three jailed terrorists for 166 passengers of the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 that was hijacked to Kandahar Dec 24, 1999 by a Pakistan-based terrorist group.

Which is less wrong? To try and save 166 human lives or let three terrorists go? Any day, if I had the choice as a government minister, I’d work for saving lives. No government has the right to allow its own citizens to die.