New Delhi, January 9
Home Minister P Chidambaram’s visit to the United States to share the dossier of evidence establishing Pakistani link with the Mumbai terror attack is off for all practical purposes though officially the government claims it has been postponed. It is understood that officials in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the foreign office were not enthused as soon as they learnt that Chidambaram proposed to leave for Washington with the dossier.
Besides informing the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) about his plan to visit Washington, the Home Minister announced it in an interview to a television news channel.
The powerful bureaucracy in the PMO and the foreign office immediately got into the act and argued that no purpose would be served by Chidambaram’s visit at this stage when the Bush administration was in a limbo, waiting for Barack Obama to assume Presidency. Officials contended that a high-level visit should take place only after the Obama administration takes over later this month.
