NEW DELHI: (AMN) Former union minister and Rajya Sabha MP Mani Shankar Aiyar has said that UPA government’s foreign policy has become pro Israeli and it is against the cause of Palestinians.
In conversation with India’s major daily The Indian Express Aiyar said: “We have become so dependent on defence supplies from Israel that when I put up a Rajya Sabha question seeking the government’s reply on whether it equated the large number of civilians killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza strip — as found by the Justice Goldstone fact-finding team — with the killings by Hamas, the Ministry of External Affairs disallowed my question, calling it a state secret”.
The MP asked since when the subject of India-Palestine relations become a state secret?, reminding India was in the forefront of the Palestinian cause?”
He re-iterated India’s traditional position based on what Mahatma Gandhi had said – that Palestine was for Palestinians as England was for English. “This was what put forward by Nehru followed by Indira Gandhi right up to the Rajiv Gandhi era. In fact, Rajiv had taken a tour of the region and had frequent interaction with Yasser Arafat” he reminded.
Earlier at seminar on Palestine CPM leader Karat had said that if a person like Mani takes the initiative to form a group of MPs on Palestine, members from other parties will also join it. The seminar was organised by the Committee for Solidarity with Palestine and other organisations. “I am ready to take the initiative to form such a group,” said Aiyar.
