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Friday, Oct 03, 2008
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A colossal loss for India: BJP

Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI: Terming the passage of the New Delhi-Washington nuclear deal by the U.S. Senate and the remarks by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a “colossal loss” for India, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday charged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the UPA government with mortgaging the sovereignty of the nation in perpetuity.

Accusing Dr. Singh of leading the nation into a “blind trap,” BJP spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy told journalists here that the passage of the deal might be a victory for the UPA regime, but it was certainly a defeat for the country. The deal was tantamount to India acceding to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime. “It appears as if all the obligations are squarely placed on India while all the privileges have been heaped on the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).”

Mr. Rudy said Ms. Rice’s unambiguous remarks that any nuclear test by India would entail serious consequences, including automatic termination of all cooperation coupled with imposition of sanctions, vindicated the BJP’s stand that India, under the UPA dispensation, had abrogated all its rights to conduct any nuclear test forever.

Mr. Rudy said, the publicised virtues of the deal were non-existent.

The U.S. had given no binding fuel supply assurance to India. Neither was there any consent to India stockpiling lifetime fuel reserves for power reactors. The civil nuclear cooperation was explicitly conditional on India not testing ever again.

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