By IRNA,
Srinagar, India : Asserting that hunger and poverty and not the America were the real enemies of Indian Muslims, president of the National Conference, Omar Abdullah, said in his speech in Indian parliament that Indo-US nuclear deal will help India cope with hunger and poverty.
Speaking in the parliament in favor of the motion of confidence moved by prime minister Manmohan Singh, Omar said that the Indo-US nuclear deal was a bilateral agreement which would work on the basis of equality.
He said that the US or anyone else was not the enemy of Indian Muslims, but the real foes were poverty, unemployment, lack of development and hunger.
“The nuclear deal can help combat this situation,” he said.
“I am not a member of the UPA, nor do I want to be, but it is fact that by tying up with the NDA I committed a grave mistake,” he said.
Criticizing the Left parties, he said that the people who had treated him as an outcast till yesterday were drawing him to themselves in the name of secularism.
Without naming extremist Hindu parties, Omar said: “You are communalists. We don’t demolish mosques and temples. The Amarnath yatra has been going on for the past 100 years, and it will continue till Kashmiri Muslims are alive,” he said.
“You people stopped the Amarnath yatra, but show me one instance where any Kashmiri has talked against or attacked the yatra or yatris,” he said.
“This (the recent agitation on the land transfer) was an issue of our land, and we will continue to fight for our land till death,” he said.
“We don’t change colors like the BJP. We have joined hands with secularists, and support the Manmohan Singh government,” he said.
He highlighted the communal harmony Kashmiri Muslims had shown even under times of severe strain, and said that they were not in the habit of demolishing temples and mosques.