‘PM will take a call on attending CHOGM’: Salman Khurshid

New Delhi – External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Saturday said Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will decide as to whether he would participate in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in Colombo later this month.

“There is no update. The Prime Minister will take a call. We don’t have anything yet. Everyone has given their inputs and the PM will decide,” he said.

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram met Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) supremo M. Karunanidhi in Chennai earlier in the day, and said a final decision is yet to be taken on the Prime Minister’s visit to Sri Lanka.

“A final decision yet to be taken, the individual Congress leaders have expressed their opinion,” he said.

There has been stiff opposition from the political outfits in Tamil Nadu, including DMK and the AIADMK, over the Prime Minister’s visit to Sri Lanka.

The Tamil Nadu assembly unanimously adopted a resolution last month that said India must boycott the session to register its protest against the Sri Lankan government’s failure to investigate and punish those who allegedly persecuted the island’s ethnic Tamils in the final phase of the civil war that ended in 2009 when the military feared the rebel Tamil Tigers.

The DMK supremo has also warned that if the Prime Minister travels to Sri Lanka, ‘his party will have to face the consequences’.

“India should not participate in the meet, which means even a speck of rust from India should not go to the Commonwealth meeting,” Karunanidhi said.