New Delhi: Observing that the Kargil conflict was a result of "failure of management of information", Finance Minister Jaswant Singh today (Dec 22, 2003) asserted that intelligence agencies should avoid turf war and integrate themselves for the sake of serving national interests.

The Kargil conflict was a result of "failure of management of information, its conversion into actionable intelligence (which led to) sub-serving of national security," he said while delivering an endowment lecture organised by the Intelligence Bureau in New Delhi.

Stating that the enormity of the intelligence failure was witnessed in the 9/11 terror strikes, Singh said the two prime agencies -- CIA and FBI -- "continued to squabble with each other, like what we witness on a daily basis in the Government of India, despite information (about the impending strikes) being available to the US establishment. It (the US attacks) was not merely a faulty assessment" of intelligence.

Asserting that intelligence should never be a "reactive activity", he asked the agencies to avoid "turf war" among themselves saying pooling in of information, converting it into actionable intelligence and using this intelligence to serve national interests should be their task.

Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, who presided over Singh's lecture on 'Information, Intelligence and Security', said the boundaries between internal and external security had evaporated ever since "our neighbour launched proxy war against us".