By IANS,
New Delhi : In a candid admission, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Friday that the “toughest decision” of his tenure was the inking of the India-US civil nuclear deal and that he was ready to resign if it did not go through.
“I was quite clear that if the nuclear deal had not gone through, I would have resigned. I made this known to everybody concerned,” he said during an interaction with members of the Indian Women’s Press Corps here.
He added that the whole process of getting the nuclear deal to fruition after the stringent opposition of his government’s then allies, the Left, was his “toughest moment.
“The toughest moment was to get the nuclear deal through and the fact that we succeeded despite the desertion of the Left was matter of great satisfaction,” he said.
Terming the deal a “matter of honour for India”, Manmohan Singh added: “We had negotiated with the United States for three years. At the end of the negotiations, if we could not get it through, that would have given a very bad impression to the world.”
“It was to save India’s honour that I staked my reputation that if the nuclear deal is not there I will not be PM,” said the soft-spoken Indian premier.