Government announces measures to deal with terrorism
To provide foreign secretary with thesaurus

After a cabinet meeting lasting nearly three hours in the capital today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that India would get tougher with Pakistan on the issue of terrorism.
“We are going to provide Shyam Saran with a thesaurus shortly. This will mean sterner responses to any attacks. No more soft letters indicating displeasure, we will use all the words in the 2006 edition of the Oxford press thesaurus to deal with Pakistan,” he said while being patted on the head by Sonia Gandhi.

In an indication of the kind of policy India would adopt, the prime minister said the words the foreign secretary had already looked up were ‘perhaps, maybe and spine.’

In a retaliatory statement, Pakistani foreign minister Kasuri announced in Islamabad that unlike India, the Pakistani foreign office did not need a thesaurus as they were already in possession of a dictionary purchased last week to look up ‘democracy’.

Insiders say that the cabinet discussed various measures to deal with the problem including the idea of airdropping Brinda Karat into Lahore, but decided on this measure on Pranab Mukerjee’s advice. “Saying a lot and not meaning it is a strategy that the left front lives by, and going by their success, it was but a matter of time before the government tried it at the international level,” a source from the foreign office said.

Denying allegations from opposition parties that Indian foreign policy relating to Pakistan was influenced by the United States; the secretary said that the government would formally issue a statement on the matter shortly, “as soon as the fax from Washington arrives”

In other news, the White House has defended US president George bush’s backrub to the German Chancellor Merkel, declaring it his as his attempt to return to the ‘Clinton era’.