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Singhvi rejects charges on deal

KOLKATA: “You cannot have a blind-spot on ideological considerations wrapped in a time warp,” Abhishek Manu Singhvi, national spokesperson of the Congress, said here on Sunday while referring to criticisms of the India-United States nuclear deal by the Left parties even as he charged the “main Opposition party [the Bharatiya Janata Party]” with “hypocrisy” in its reservations on the agreement.

“None can cure such ideological blind-spots but oneself … Nothing can deter the government from acting in the national interest while engaging with each other constituent, within and without the government,” he added at an interactive session on the “Indo-U.S. Nuclear Agreement,” organised by the Prabha Khaitan Foundation.

As for the government’s present “engagements” with the Left parties on certain aspects of the 123 agreement, Dr. Singhvi said that he had “no reason to be pessimistic” of the outcome. But if matters go awry “we will cross the bridge when we come to it.”

“There is absolutely no apprehension, danger of the possibility of 123 agreement being impacted by the Hyde Act. This is a mismatched conception”, he added.

“We are required to respect the American interpretation of their own law rather than our own interpretations [of that law]”. If the latter turns out to be the case it is like “ghosts creating imaginary apprehensions,” Dr. Singhvi remarked.

On the ideological opposition to certain aspects of the nuclear agreement by the Left parties he said that the “the Left has a unique advantage that it is not plagued by the basic ills of caste, criminalisation and corruption”. “But to live up to that unique position they have to realise there are no absolutes in international relations,” Dr Singhvi added.

In contrast was the “hypocrisy of the main Opposition party”. “We are criticised by them for bartering away India’s sovereignty but it was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who, on the floor of the United Nations in 1998, committed India to a permanent moratorium on [nuclear] testing”.

“The same party now is saying we have bartered away our right to nuclear tests even though there is not a single clause in the 123 agreement which is potentially derogatory to India”, he pointed out.

Dr. Singhvi ridiculed the Leader of the Opposition, L.K. Advani’s demand for a joint parliamentary committee to which the deal should be referred and described it as “opportunism”.

“This government has debated the issue in Parliament more than five times, none of which it was required to do. The object [of the BJP] is to confuse, complicate in accordance to its political convenience”.

On whether the government is in any particular hurry to get the deal operationalised Dr. Singhvi said: “if we have to get rid of nuclear isolation we have to move fast”. The “slow movement” is in respect to “transparency considerations”. “Every other country is accelerating its nuclear programme. Do we need to decelerate it is the issue.”

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