No money was paid to terrorists in any form : Jaswant

New Delhi, July 17 (UNI) BJP senior leader and former Minister for External Affairs Jaswant Singh today asserted that no money was paid to the terrorists in exchange of release of passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814 at Kandahar and said that the Congress was just repeating an allegation it had regretted in Parliament.

Mr Singh was reacting to the demand of Congress Spokesman Satyavrat Chaturvedi that the BJP should apologise to the nation for ''this indiscretion'' and expel Mr Singh from the party if the revelation in this regards, in his forthcoming book "A Call to Honour", was true.

He said his forthcoming book had amply made it clear that the NDA Cabinet had ''unanimously rejected'' the terrorists demand seeking the release of 36 terrorists languishing in various Indian jails, 200 million dollars of cash and exhumation of a body of a buried terrorist.

''I myself announced the Cabinet decision,'' Mr Singh said.

However, he declined to comment on how the Cabinet decision was reversed when the government released three terrorists including, Jaish-e-Mohammad Chief Maulana Masood Azhar, in exchange of the captive passengers and said that the details were there in the book which would hit the stands by 21 of this month all over the country.

He also refused to answer a question if the then Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani was opposed to the government's decision to release the terrorists. ''When I say Cabinet decision was unanimous, it had the concurrence of every member,'' he said.

Mr Advani, during his recent Bharat Suraksha Yatra at Pune, had distanced himself from the release of terrorists when he said, ''I had expressed my view in the Cabinet.'' Mr Singh clarified that he returned to the Rajya Sabha only after the member who levelled the allegations against him on December 9, 2004 expressed his regrets in the presence of two senior Congress Ministers.

''I had told the open House I am ready to face any probe -- be it Joint Parlimentary Committee probe, by the CBI or Interpol and withdraw from the House until I am cleared,'' he said.

About the allegations that he accompanied the terrorists to be released and the explosives in the same plane, Mr Singh said, ''this Congress gentleman should first read the book.'' Mr Singh also said that he would not speak about the contents of the book until it was released and reviewed, according to his ''commitment'' to the publisher.

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