New Delhi, July 30 - Congress president Sonia Gandhi Thursday backed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the India-Pakistan joint statement, indicating that the apparent gulf between the government and sections of the party had been bridged.

The new stance was also backed in public by Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi who said the party and the government were 'absolutely one' on the joint statement issued July 16 after Manmohan Singh met his Pakistan counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani in Egypt.

Party sources said there were differences among senior ministers initially over the joint statement that sought to delink terrorism from the dialogue with Pakistan, but Sonia Gandhi overruled them at a core committee meeting Friday last and at the Congress Parliamentary Party meet Thursday.

A senior minister said that 'some ministers were particularly upset over inclusion of Balochistan in the joint statement, which the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) made the most of' during a two-day debate in parliament on the issue.

'There may be some dissenting noises now but they are not very vocal,' the minister told IANS on condition of anonymity, and pointed to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is a former external affairs minister, putting up a staunch defence of the prime minister in the Lok Sabha Thursday.

Mukherjee even had intermittent heated exchanges with BJP leaders on the issue, saying that there was no dilution in the country's foreign policy.

For the Congress, it was quite a change from the situation a few days ago, when party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi had told journalists to 'go and ask the government' on being asked to react to the joint statement.