Advani blogs about Obama's visit

New Delhi: Senior BJP leader L K Advani today praised US President Barack Obama for his "superb" address to Parliament but lamented that he did not utter a word on Kashmir even though the issue was part of his speeches during his own election campaign in 2008.

In his latest blog titled 'A global partnership', the BJP veteran said that in the course of Obama's election campaign in 2008 he had remarked that "working with Pakistan and India to try to resolve the Kashmir crisis in a serious way would be among the critical tasks of my administration".

"For all Indians, what he said was important, and heartening. But what he omitted to say, I think, was no less important. There was no mention of the word Kashmir in his speech," Advani said.

Terming the historic speech of Obama to Members of Parliament as "really superb, both in content as well as in its style of delivery", Advani, however, labelled it as nothing but a mere effort to send across the message that India was more than a market for Americans.

"It was a conscious effort to dispel this impression that India for Americans is just a market, nothing else".

The BJP veteran backs his observations on Obama's speech by saying that his party colleague Sushma Swaraj met the US' First Citizen and told him that the impression common Indian citizens have about the Americans towards this part of the world was -- "For Washington, Pakistan is an ally, India is a market."

Recounting parts of Obama's speech to law makers of the largest democracy in the world, Advani said the US President lauded India's great civilisation, its pluralism and its democracy.

"He spoke of Vivekananda, of Gandhi, of Tagore and Ambedkar. He said he looked forward to India becoming a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council," Advani said in the blog.