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Advani springs to Vajpayee's defence over Bofors, shoots off six queries at Sonia

Bharatiya Janata Party president L K Advani on Saturday sprang to the defence of the party's prime ministerial candidate A B Vajpayee, whom Sonia Gandhi alleged yesterday was lying on the Bofors gun deal, and posed a set of questions to her on the issue.

Speaking to newsmen at Thiruvananthapuram airport on his way to Marthandam in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, Advani said since Sonia had levelled the most "scurrilous"charge against the BJP and Vajpayee, he would like to ask the following six questions of her.

1. Why did she not demand all these years, and especially when the Congress was in office for full five years between 1991 and 1996, that the government reveal the truth about Bofors?

2. Why does she not ask Ottavio Quattrocchi and his wife Maria, who were close frieds of the Rajiv Gandhi family and who had free access to 10, Janpath, to return to India and answer the questions which the CBI is waiting to ask and thus help clear the name of Rajiv Gandhi?

3. Why was she silent when Quattrocchi was allowed by the Congress government to leave India?

4. Why was she silent when, during the Congress regime in 1992, the then foreign minister, Madhavsinh Solanki, carried a mysterious letter to Geneva -- a grossly improper act which cost him his job?

5. Is Sonia Gandhi not aware that, for the first time in India's parliamentary history, the entire Opposition resigned from the Lok Sabha on the issue of Bofors in 1989?

6. Does Sonia Gandhi not know that eminent journalists and public figures like N Ram, Chitra Subramaniam and Prashant Bhushan have written scores of articles, and the last named, even a book -- in which Rajiv Gandhi has been directly implicated for the Bofors pay-off deal? With the enormous resources of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, why had she not cared to sue them for defamation?

Pointing out that it was Sonia Gandhi who had first dragged the Bofors issue in the current election campaign, Advani said this had forced the BJP to raise several pertinent questions, none of which she had cared to reply so far.

It was not only the BJP, but the entire nation wanted to know the truth, the whole truth about the Bofors deal, he added.

Advani said Rajiv Gandhi, whose Congress had won over 400 seats in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections, was thrown out of office in 1989 and V P Singh, who was at that time spearheading the anti-Bofors movement, was installed in his place. The poll verdict was an unambiguous indictment of the Congress as the people were convinced that the Rajiv government was responsible for the Bofors scandal, he said..

"That the nation was cheated of a huge amount is now undisputed. What the people are keen to know is: who are the ultimate beneficiaries who had amassed this enormous wealth? Who is this Italian gentleman, Ottavio Quattrocchi, whom the CBI is believed to have identified as one of the prime accused?" he added.

The BJP leader said Sonia could not arrogate to herself the privilege of a hit-and-run strategy in an election campaign. If she raised certain issues and attacked her adversaries, she must subject herself to scrutiny by the media as well as the rest of society.

UNI in Thiruvananthapuram

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