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‘Advani bigger danger than Bush’

Sandeep Dikshit

Amar Singh says SP is for nuclear deal, but it will not commit itself to an alliance

NEW DELHI: The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Saturday indicated that it would go with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on the nuclear deal, since fundamentalism was a bigger enemy than imperialism. However, the SP said it would not commit itself to an alliance.

Describing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a bigger danger than the U.S., SP general secretary Amar Singh told newspersons here, “For us communalism is a bigger danger than imperialism. Advani is a bigger danger than Bush …. It [the nuclear deal] is neither a Muslim deal nor a Hindu deal.”

“Today the Left parties, the BSP, the BJP and [Indian National Lok Dal leader Om Prakash] Chautala may vote together. If our friends from the Left want to defeat the government with the BSP and the BJP, we don’t want to say anything. But we can’t do this work.”

“Let the confidence motion come and then we will decide,” he said on being queried about the party’s stand in case of a trial of strength in Parliament. Asked which side the party would favour — secular or communal — Mr. Singh described both the UPA and the Left as secular.

Maintaining that there had been no talks with the Congress on an alliance, he said, “neither have they asked for our support nor have we committed ours. We are outsiders till now. [CPI-M general secretary Prakash] Karat and [UPA chairperson] Sonia Gandhi are insiders. They have formed the government and are running it. There is no divorce as yet. They [Left] have only given a warning. This warning has been going on for a year.”

“There is no deal [with the Congress],” said the SP general secretary, adding that if Lok Jan Shakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan with just three MPs could become a Cabinet Minister, the SP with 39 Lok Sabha MPs could have gone much further. The SP, he said, had never been with the fundamentalists. At the same time, it had never been with the Congress.

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