Monitoring Indian Communists - 2

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Mitrokhin Archive II , HOW INDIAN LEADERS STATEMENTS

1. Ambika Soni

" Congress Party general secretary Ambika Soni told the BBC the author had no evidence for his claims. "

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4257764.stm


2. Abhishek Manu Singhvi

"One can't even comment on them," said Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a Congress party spokesman.However, Singhvi said the Soviet Union was a source of strength for India in the Cold War era. " We are proud of it," he said.

“This is pure sensationalism not even remotely based on facts or records,”

“These are all vague allegations,” he said pointing out that they were not the officially released USSR archive records and were based on papers ‘stolen’ by a person who defected to the West in 1992. They are not official records”.

“They should not be dignified by reaction,” he said adding “it is the version of a person who is publishing it after 15 years of his defection and 50 years after everybody involved in the incidents was present. Almost everyone has died. There is no way of checking”.


Source: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

3. CONGRESS AND LEFT : " Neither party was willing to officially go on record although an AICC official rejected the charges as “a bunch of lies”.

“The allegations are very serious. But perhaps they are meant to boost the sale of the book. We have no doubt they are a bunch of lies,” the official said about the extracts from a new book on KGB’s global operations which appeared in a London paper today. "

Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050918/asp/...ory_5253087.asp

4. Former foreign secretary K. Raghunath, who was also India’s ambassador to Moscow, said:

“Anybody who makes such sweeping comments should be able to substantiate them. Prima facie, the charges made in the report look absurd.”

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050918/asp/...ory_5253087.asp

5. Sharad Yadav.

He said: “If it is true, it teaches us that till our people are empowered enough to influence the political class, leaders will be guided by rich and powerful countries. It tells us our foreign policy has never been independent.”


6. D. Rajah, a leader of the Communist Party of India, which supported the Soviet Union, said the authors' claims were


COMMENT : "untrue, false and concocted."
"I dismiss it with the contempt that it deserves".


7 . Kuldip Nayar, a veteran journalist who has exhaustively chronicled that era, said:

“I can’t talk of the media being on the take but it was well known then that suitcases of money used to change hands.”

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,...57,00.html

8. Veteran Indian journalist Kuldip Nayyar, who has extensively covered Indira Gandhi, said there was nothing new in the book.

“The Congress-KGB links were an open secret at that time. This doesn’t come as a surprise to me,”

Source: http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/09/19/kgbindia.shtml

9. BJP party spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said “The perception of Congress-KGB links has always been there. The book only makes it stronger. We want a federal probe into this,”

Source: http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/09/19/kgbindia.shtml

"We demand a statement from the Congress," said BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. "These are serious allegations."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->