The Hindu : National : It is a blunder, charges NDA

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 05, 2005

National

National

It is a blunder, charges NDA

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The National Democratic Alliance on Thursday charged the United Progressive Alliance Government in the Rajya Sabha with having committed a "big blunder'' by agreeing to separate the country's civilian and defence nuclear installations under the recently-signed Indo-U.S. pact.

Initiating a discussion on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement in the House on the pact, BJP leader Sushma Swaraj said: "This is like the mistake Jawaharlal Nehru committed in taking the Kashmir issue to the United Nations. We have paid hard cash in exchange of a promissory note, that not the U.S. but its partner countries would be asked to pay.''

Noting that there were serious differences over the pact even between the Congress and its allies, she sought to know whether the Prime Minister had consulted UPA allies, the Cabinet, the Cabinet Committee on Security or even his senior colleagues on the issue. She asked why Parliament was not taken into confidence.

Reacting strongly to Ms. Swaraj's remarks Ambika Soni (Congress) accused the BJP of "bankruptcy of political thought'' by degenerating the discussion on such a "historic pact''. "The Congress would never compromise on national prestige,'' she said.

Firmly dissociating himself from "a BJP attempt to co-opt the Left'' on the issue, Nilotpal Basu (CPI-M) sought to know how many Cabinet meetings the NDA had held before the Pokhran II explosions. He, however, asked the UPA Government why a national consensus was not evolved before deciding that nuclear energy was the appropriate energy mix to meet energy needs. On the Prime Minister's remarks on Iraq, he said it could not be said that "it (Iraq) was in the past''. "We cannot fight terrorism the U.S. way. What happened in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are living nightmares against which the world has to unite. Out objective is not uni-polarism but multilateralism. And that is why we want reforms of the United Nations and the expansion of the U.N. Security Council.''

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