On Friday, April 18, 2003, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee took a stunning somersault at Srinagar: in a speech which newspapers described as poetic, he offered talks and a hand of friendship to Pakistan without at all mentioning the months-old pre-condition that the neighbour stop its cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

The very next day, he performed another somersault: he said that on the very morrow of the day Pakistan announced a halt to its violence, he would send a foreign ministry official to Rawalpindi.

Two policy somersaults in just about 24 hours must be a record for any prime minister or president of any country. It certainly makes one wonder whether Vajpayee has become too forgetful if not exactly senile and whether the poetic licence that sympathisers confer on him carries the right, in cricketing terms, to bowl a no-ball and yet expect a favourable lbw verdict.

rest of the article is at http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/apr/29arvind.htm

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