Tuesday, September 26 2006 17:24 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee today (Sept 26, 2006) attributed the failure of his Agra summit with President Pervez Musharraf to the Pakistan leader's stand that the bloodshed in Kashmir was the people's battle for freedom.

Vajpayee, who rejected Musharraf's remarks in his book that both felt insulted in Agra, insisted that the then NDA Government believed that there could be no normalcy in ties between India and Pakistan until there was an end to cross-border terrorism.

"I am still to see the book (In the Line of Fire), but his reported comments on the failure of our talks at Agra have surprised me. No one insulted the General and certainly no one insulted me," the former Prime Minister said in a statement here.

Vajpayee recalled his bus journey to Lahore to meet the then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a trip he said was aimed at thrashing out terrorism and other issues in person.

"That trip was appreciated by all, but it yielded no results," he said as he recalled his Government's invitation to Musharraf after the change in the Pakistani establishment.

"General Musharraf readily accepted our invitation and came to Delhi. But at Agra, during our talks, he took a stand that the violence that was taking place in Jammu and Kashmir could not be described as 'terrorism'. He continued to claim that the bloodshed in the state was nothing but the people's battle for freedom," Vajpayee said.

"It was this stand of General Musharraf that India just could not accept and this was responsible for the failure of the Agra summit," he added.