CPI to ask government to scrap n-deal

Dec 14, 2007, 15:18 GMT

New Delhi, Dec 14 (IANS) In yet another indication that the Left-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) row over the India-US nuclear deal was set to worsen, the Communist Party of India (CPI) Friday said it would ask the government to scrap the agreement as a majority in parliament was opposed to it.

'We do not want the deal. We do not want the deal to be operationalised... There is no doubt about it. Arithmetically, the sense of the house (parliament) is that a majority of the members are opposed to the deal,' CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan told reporters here.

Pointing out that the government should take into account the views various political parties had voiced during a debate in parliament, Bardhan said his party would ask the government to give up the deal in the next UPA-Left nuclear committee meeting.

He hoped the government would come with the details of its negotiations with the UN atomic body International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on India-specific safeguards in the seventh meeting of the joint nuclear panel. No dates have been fixed for the meeting.

The 15-member nuclear committee, formed to address concerns raised by the Left over the agreement, had given its nod for the government-IAEA India-specific negotiations. But it insisted that the government should come back to the committee before initialising the safeguards agreement.

Bardhan's counterpart in the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Prakash Karat has recently been quoted saying at a party meeting that the government would not be allowed to go ahead with the deal after its talks with the IAEA.

The Left wants the government to ensure fuel supplies to Indian nuclear reactors in perpetuity and also continuation of civilian nuclear cooperation as well as India-specific safeguards even if the Indo-US deal is terminated.

Senior Left leaders admit that this was an impossible task - and in the process, minus Communist support, the Indo-US nuclear agenda would derail.

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service