The Hindu : Front Page : Manmohan should explain stand on nuclear issue: BJP

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Wednesday, Jun 29, 2011
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Manmohan should explain stand on nuclear issue: BJP

Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI: The undoing of the earlier ‘clean waiver' to India by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) at the recent meeting in the Netherlands now means that a key assurance given by the Prime Minister to the country through Parliament stands nullified.

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday demanded that the Prime Minister break his silence on this crucial issue and explain the “compromising” of India's strategic autonomy without the lifting of all restrictions on the sale of sensitive nuclear equipment to it.

“This was the last feather in the cap of the Prime Minister — the signing of the nuclear agreement and the clean waiver India got earlier — and this has also dropped,” BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said.

Expressing the party's concern on the U-turn by NSG at its recent meeting in the Netherlands, Mr. Rudy said that in effect it meant that the nuclear deal was extracted from India under false pretexts and that the Prime Minister, in turn, gave assurances to Parliament which were now far from the ground reality. The NSG's new condition was that no country that was not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty could be given equipment for enrichment and reprocessing. “This cuts at the very foundations of the India-U.S. nuclear agreement,” he said.

India has been betrayed by the NSG and the U.S. and the Prime Minister misled the country, the BJP alleged.

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