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Discuss nuclear deal in winter session: Karat

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said here on Thursday that the winter session of Parliament beginning on November 15 would be an ideal opportunity for a discussion on the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.

Delivering the first R. Sankaranarayanan Thampi Lecture, organised by the Institute of Parliamentary Studies of the Government of Kerala in memory of the first Speaker of the Kerala Legislative Assembly, Mr. Karat said the Left was not interested in a political confrontation with the government over the issue or to tie the government’s existence to the nuclear deal. There is a Common Minimum Programme and the Left only wishes to tell the government not to bring in things that are not there. The Left is also not against use of nuclear technology to meet the energy requirements of the country.

Its opposition is to the military and foreign policy aspects of the deal, which were clearly weighted against Indian interests. The Government’s claims about the energy that could be generated with imported nuclear material are also quite unconvincing.

Referring to the criticism that the Left had woken up to the deal only two years after the whole process had been set in motion, Mr. Karat said the Left had voiced its opposition to nuclear cooperation between India and the U.S. when the two came out with the joint statement after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the U.S. in July 2005. When the two countries went in for a Defence Framework Agreement, the Left had once again raised its voice against it. Following strong criticism from the Left, the Prime Minister had given nine specific assurances to Parliament on August 17, 2006.

The Left expected it to stick to these assurances, but that was not to be.

He said the Left wanted the government to go by the sense of Parliament and that the coming one or two meetings of the UPA-Left joint panel on the Hyde Act would help the two sides to arrive at some conclusion on the issue.

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