Islamabad, Sept 22 (ANI): British-Indian author Salman Rushdie has said that Former British Prime Minister Sir John Major's government did not offer him much assistance when Iran issued a fatwa to kill him.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini imposed the fatwa against him in 1989, following the publication of The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie, in an interview with the Independent, said the government of the time 'had this idea of keeping quiet and letting it go away'.
According to the paper, he also said the death sentence would have been lifted earlier had the Major government pushed the issue.
"The Foreign Office I often felt was hostile. That sense I'd made a terrible nuisance of myself was there in quite a lot of the civil servants that I met," the paper quoted Rushdie, as saying.
According to the paper, the author said that the attitudes changed following the election of New Labour in 1997 driven by support from Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, and his deputy Derek Fatchett.
"Cook was just passionately determined to fix this. It was so different, the mood," Rushdie added. (ANI)
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