FCongress President Sonia Gandhi addressing at CPP General Body Meeting on

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18 February 2003

Fellow MPs and Colleagues:

We go into the Budget session in the background of the extraordinarily tense situation in West Asia. This region is vital to our country not only because of our long historical,Lebron James Shoes, cultural and political links,Lebron 10 Elite, not only because of oil supplies but also because about 3,Coach Factory Outlet Online.5 million of our countrymen and women live and work there. The Congress’s position on the Iraq crisis has been clear from the beginning. We believe that whatever action has to be taken must flow out of an explicit and clear UN mandate,Cheap Lebron 10. We deplore any attempt to weaken the authority of the UN. We hope that India will also take an active part in diplomatic efforts to defuse the current tensions,Coach Outlet.

In just a few days, the 13th Non-Aligned Summit is to be held in Kuala Lumpur,Grapes 5. NAM must be imparted a new sense of purpose and direction, keeping in mind contemporary global and regional challenges,Jordan Grapes 5.

We are also meeting in the backdrop of an escalating war of words between India and Pakistan,Jordan 5 Grape. There can be no doubt whatsoever that Pakistan continues to foment cross-border terrorism and that sections of its ruling establishment simply do not want normal relations to prevail between the two countries. Having said this,Coach Factory Outlet, I should also say that the BJP, the VHP and the RSS are not averse to using our confrontation with Pakistan to polarise our own society.

You are aware that the Congress Working Committee met on January 5th. It passed an important resolution on the current political situation and I would like every one of you to re-read it and widely project what it contains. In the resolution, the CWC has drawn a distinction between respect for the cultural, spiritual and philosophical traditions of Hindu Dharma and the Hindu way of life and the political misuse of Hinduism to spread hate. When I spoke at the launch of the People’s Integration Council some days back, I expanded on this theme. Our fight has to be against religious fundamentalism, obscurantism and bigotry of all kinds. Our adversaries are those who distort the basic values of all of the great religions that are practiced in our country. Let us be under no illusions: the BJP and its allied organisations will stoop to any level, spread any falsehood to achieve their goals. We must and we will not permit them to do so. We will go the people with our message of social inclusiveness and harmony. We will go to the people to convince them that those who appoint themselves as guardians of any faith and use it for partisan purposes, are, in fact, distorting the very essence of that faith.

On the Ayodhya issue, we have all along stated that we should wait for and respect the verdict of the judiciary and till then nothing should be done to disturb the status quo. The judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in 1994 on the acquisition of land in Ayodhya had specifically forbidden the handing over of any part of the 67 acres of acquired land to any party before the final settlement of the main Ayodhya title deed. I am sure that all attempts presently being made to misinterpret that judgment will eventually be frustrated.

This is the Budget session and therefore economic issues will preoccupy us in the weeks ahead. While the performance of the Indian economy on the external front appears satisfactory, we hope that the Budget will provide the right signals and incentives for reviving the investment momentum, both in the public and private sectors, in agriculture and industry. With unprecedented food grain stocks and foreign exchange reserves, this is the right time for a major national programme to expand and deepen rural infrastructure, particularly in the backward regions of the country. On tax reforms, we are all for simplicity and transparency, we are all for making the tax administration more effective. But there has also to be stability in tax policy, without which investors, domestic and foreign, will not get the right signals. We also believe long-term savings have t

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