Former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has said action against Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed was important for ensuring regional peace.
In an interview, Singh highlighted the importance of action against Saeed and other people responsible for the Mumbai attack.
"Pakistan's handing over of Hafiz Saeed will be a goodwill gesture," he said.
Singh, whose book 'Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence', had created a furore in his party leading to his expulsion, said the partition of the Indian subcontinent was a "great tragedy" that even Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah did not want.
Mahatma Gandhi and Jinnah, who were originally from what is now the Indian state of Gujarat, wanted to unify India, Singh said.
Jinnah spent almost his entire life as an Indian and only 13 in Pakistan, said Singh, who concluded a visit to Pakistan to promote his book on Jinnah over the weekend.
Expressing grief over the partition, Singh argued: "Muslims did not benefit from the partition and if the Indian subcontinent had remained undivided, we would have become a great power".
Asked about the intolerance demonstrated by the BJP, which expelled him from the party after the release of his book, he said: "When (former premier Atal Bihari) Vajpayee wrote a note of appreciation for Mr Jinnah in the visitor's book at the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore, you washed the place we'd visited. What tolerance are we talking about?"
Singh also dismissed allegations that Indian intelligence agency RAW was involved in destabilising Pakistan.
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