The Hindu : Front Page : Deal won’t hurt strategic programme: Manmohan

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Sunday, Nov 18, 2007
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Deal won’t hurt strategic programme: Manmohan

Gargi Parsai

Sonia: nuclear deal will help India access new technologies

— PHOTO: PTI/Manvender V. Love

FAITH IN YOUTH: Congress president Sonia Gandhi addresses the AICC session as her son Rahul Gandhi watches, in New Delhi on Saturday. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the meeting that “young leaders of the party like him [Rahul] can win the minds and affections of our youth and take the Congress party and the nation to new frontiers and new heights of glory.”

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Saturday strongly defended the India-United States nuclear agreement and asserted that it would not hurt India’s strategic programme.

They were addressing an All-India Congress Committee meeting here.

Departing from his written text in Hindi, Dr. Singh asserted in English that the “propaganda” being made that the nuclear deal would hurt India’s strategic programme was totally wrong. “The agreement concerns only the civil side of the nuclear energy and will have no bearing on our strategic programme. It remains intact without international interference and won’t affect our sense of judgment on foreign policy.”

The Prime Minister said India was too big a country and the heritage of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi in itself was a guarantee that nobody could bend it in any direction.

He said that for the pace at which the economy was growing, the country needed to expand its power generation capacity on a massive scale and one possible source was nuclear energy. So far, this route had been closed. The deal was an effort to open the closed doors so that India could obtain nuclear fuel and technology from other countries such as the U.S., Russia and France. The reality needed to be understood and explained to the people.

Ms. Gandhi admitted that there was difference of opinion with the United Progressive Alliance’s supporting parties on the nuclear deal and said that efforts were on to work out a consensus. At the same time, coalition meant positive support of all allies and supporting parties. “Working in a coalition did not mean that the Congress should lose its political space forever,” she asserted.

Backing the Prime Minister, Ms. Gandhi said the deal would facilitate India to access fuel and new technologies to fulfil its requirements in the energy sector. Ms. Gandhi reiterated that India was committed to a Universal Nuclear Disarmament, the Work Plan for which was outlined by Rajiv Gandhi in the U.N. General Assembly in 1988.

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