By IANS
New Delhi : The government’s hopes for a national consensus on the India-US nuclear deal suffered a setback Wednesday with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reiterating that the 123 pact should be “renegotiated” and “not hustled through”. The deal “compromises” the country’s long-term strategic programmes, the opposition party said.
Despite a series of recent meetings of senior US envoys and key government figures with the BJP leaders, the main opposition party came out with a four-point statement, accusing the ruling coalition of making a “strategic blunder” by making the deal “an icon of India’s relations with the US.”
“We stand opposed to the deal because in our view it compromises long-term strategic programmes of India, vital for country’s security, neither will it help meet our energy needs of the future,” said a party statement. BJP president Rajnath Singh and senior leaders L.K. Advani and Jaswant Singh signed the statement.
“Therefore, the BJP strongly recommends that this deal must be renegotiated and not hustled through as the UPA government is attempting to,” the statement said at the end of the core group meeting of the BJP attended by senior leaders.
While rejecting the deal, the party underlined that its opposition to the deal does not detract from the party’s commitment to strengthening India-US relations.
“The BJP has consistently stood for close India-US cooperation and strategic partnership as between two equal sovereigns,” the statement said.
The BJP’s repudiation of the government’s arguments in favour of the deal comes a week ahead of the winter session of parliament starting November 15 and refutes media reports that insinuated that the party was diluting its opposition to the deal.
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, US Ambassador to India David Mulford, National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan and Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar met the three BJP leaders over the last several days in a last-ditch bid to save the nuclear deal that was seen as reflection of India’s growing stature in the international arena.
The government has put the nuclear deal on hold in the face of uncompromising opposition to it by its Left allies, who fear that the deal may reduce India to a handmaiden of the US imperial interests.
The government has not, however, given up hope of forging a national consensus and will hold one more meeting with the Left leaders Nov 16 to break the logjam over the landmark agreement that was aimed at breaking India’s three-decade long global nuclear isolation.
The UPA-Left meeting, scheduled for November 16, may be delayed amid speculation that the deal is headed for deep freezer, at least in the near future.