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Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said on Saturday that the armed forces should constantly raise their standards of 'probity, transparency and accountability'.
"Just as all the institutions of democracy are expected to respond to the rising expectations of the people, so too must the military. While keeping to their well-defined role, the armed forces need to constantly raise their standards of probity, transparency and accountability," he said.
Vajpayee's comments, coming in the wake of the tehelka.com expose on corruption in arms deals, were part of the keynote address he delivered at a seminar on 'The role of military in democracies' in New Delhi.
Vajpayee said the forces should respond positively to the issues of modern times such as human rights, environmental protection and greater participation by women.
He favoured an early convening of a global conference on terrorism under the aegis of the United Nations to deal with the deadly menace of religious extremism aided by support from across the border, saying proxy wars were a threat to democracy.
"In recent decades terrorism has emerged as a global menace and become deadlier when combined with religious extremism that receives cross-border support," he said.
Without naming any country, he said a military dictatorship would not be tolerated for long as men in uniform were neither expected nor oriented to intervene in politics.
Asserting that the military was constitutionally required to accept the supremacy of the civilian authority, Vajpayee said its role was to defend, not to govern.
PTI
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