Shashi Tharoor praises Modi's UN speech, says good reply to Pakistan

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at the United Nations drew applause from Congress spokesperson Shashi Tharoor on Sunday.

"Strong speech by @PMOIndia at #UNGA2014. Soaring internationalism, support for democracy & environment, anti-terrorism. Good reply to Pak," Tharoor said on Twitter.

At the same time, the former Minister for State for External Affairs said it was unfortunate for an Indian Prime Minister to "refer to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir as Pakistan".

"Risk of extempore speech: in foreign affairs it helps to be tightly scripted. Referring to PoK as 'Pakistan' unfortunate for an Indian PM," Tharoor said in another tweet.

Hitting out at Pakistan for raking up the Kashmir issue at the UN, the Prime Minister had yesterday offered to engage in a serious bilateral dialogue "without the shadow of terrrorism" while asking it to create an "appropriate environment" for that.

In a clear rebuff to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, who had insisted on a plebiscite in Kashmir, Modi had said, "Raising issues in this forum is not the way to make progress towards resolving issues between our two countries."

In the speech, the Prime Minister had said, "As we are rendering service to flood victims in Kashmir, we had also placed a proposal for serving the flood victims in Pakistan as well."

This is not the first time that Tharoor, who is a party spokesperson, has praised Modi.

In June, Congress had distanced itself from Tharoor's praise of Modi that had appeared on a US news website in which he had, among other things, also remarked that Modi was looking to turn himself from a "hate figure into an avatar of modernity and progress".

While the party had then described the remarks as Tharoor's "personal views" emphasising that it was too early to comment on the functioning of the government, Tharoor had later said he was "intrigued" by the fact that the paraphrases of his piece seen in the Indian media looks like people don't actually read every word and every nuance.

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