To keep the main Opposition party in the loop on major initiatives of the Government especially on foreign policy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee met top BJP leaders today, including former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani and Jaswant Singh, and briefed them on crucial internal security and foreign policy matters.This comes days after the Prime Minister's meeting with Vajpayee on the latter's birthday when the BJP leader complained that the government was not consulting the Opposition on several matters. The reference evidently was to the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal on which the BJP felt it had been kept in the dark. The PM had responded by saying that former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra - who was also present at today's meeting - had been told of the developments on the deal. The BJP has also been consistently critical of the government's "soft approach" in dealing with terrorism.Sources said the BJP leaders were briefed on the status of negotiations following the passage of the nuclear Bill in the US Congress in the run-up to the bilateral 123 agreement with Washington.A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said Mukherjee gave the BJP leaders details of the situation in the neighbourhood and India’s relations with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The meeting was said to be part of a process to work in tandem with the Opposition on major national issues and try to arrive at a political consensus. National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon were also present.This meeting comes days ahead of Mukherjee’s trip to Pakistan to officially invite Pak President General Pervez Musharraf for the SAARC summit here in April.
