The Hindu : National : Negotiate deal again, says BJP

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Friday, Aug 17, 2007
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Negotiate deal again, says BJP

Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI: The Government should either re-negotiate the nuclear deal or quit, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha said here on Thursday.

Mr. Sinha was reacting to a brief statement made by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee countering a reported statement by an American official that the deal would be off if India were to test a nuclear device.

Mr. Mukherjee had declared in the Lok Sabha that India had the “sovereign right to test and would do so if it is necessary in [the] national interest. The only restraint is our voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing declared by the previous [Vajpayee] government and being continued by the successor [Manmohan Singh] government. There is nothing in the bilateral agreement that would tie the hands of a future government or legally constrain its options.”

123 agreement

Mr. Sinha said that in the case of the 123 agreement with China, the U.S. had specifically stated that domestic laws of the two countries would not in any way apply. That was not the case with the agreement negotiated with India.

“A dead letter”

“The basic interest of the U.S. is to cap, rollback and eliminate India’s strategic nuclear programme. It is clear that the U.S. domestic law, the Hyde Act, a document of India’s humiliation, would apply to India.” Mr. Sinha also said: “I predict the agreement will remain a dead letter.”

Moratorium

He defended the declaration of a “voluntary moratorium” on further nuclear testing by the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, immediately after the 1998 Pokhran II nuclear tests. Mr. Vajpayee’s offer of a legally binding agreement on no further testing, made during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, was also explained away by Mr. Sinha as of no consequence, although in that speech Mr. Vajpayee said: “India has already accepted the basic obligation [of no further testing] of the CTBT ” while suggesting that prior to 1996 India could not have accepted this because of security considerations.

He also charged Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar and Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government R. Chidambaram with being short with the truth about the deal for “both are still government servants.”

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