Stop squabbles among security agencies: BJP to PM

The Bhartiya Janata Party on Tuesday asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to immediately step in and put an end to the squabble that has broken out among various intelligence and security agencies to shift the blame for the Mumbai terror attacks.

"Let the last 100 days of the United Progressive Alliance government (before polls take place) not become a nightmare for the country" due to the "civil war type situation" among these agencies, BJP general secretary and spokesman Arun Jaitley said.

The PM's moral authority and the legitimacy of the Prime Minister's Office to control these agencies has crumbled, he said adding that a fierce game of passing the buck using newspaper columns has started before the government fixes accountability and heads roll

Jaitley, speaking to reporters at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, said the Congress was finding scapegoats by asking for resignations of the Union home minister or the Maharashtra chief minister. He said this does not worry the nation but the open fight among the security and intelligence agencies is "most frightening," particularly when the need of the hour is for close-knit coordination.

Jaitley was referring to the RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) using columns of a prominent daily to show the National Security Adviser and the Intelligence Bureau in bad light and the Indian Navy denying the IB's claim of its tip-off on an imminent terror attack on Mumbai through the sea route.

"Political parties are known to squabble, but not the agencies on which India's security system depends" and this is happening because the political authority of the prime minister and the PMO is so weakened that they cannot put these agencies in place and prevent them from washing dirty linen in public, Jaitley added.

"No question" was snap response of Jaitley in reply to a question on Pakistan suggesting a joint probe into the attacks. "Why not then also with Lashkar-e-Tayiba?" he asked referring to the banned Islamic outfit behind these attacks.

He said the civilian government in Pakistan is already on the back foot and hence the best course for India is to confront it with "cogent evidence" and provide "telephonic evidence" gathered from tapping of conversations between the perpetrators of the terror attacks in Mumbai and their masters in Pakistan.