Agencies
Thrissur, Mar 1:
CPI general secretary A B Bardhan on Saturday alleged that the US has started "blackmailing" India for getting the civil nuclear deal signed before July, which would be stiffly opposed by the Left parties.
Earlier the US was applying pressure tactics and now it has started "blackmailing" India by threatening to block the possibilities of nuclear co-operation with Russia and other countries, he said while inaugurating the 20th state conference of the CPI in Thrissur.
"Senior American officials and diplomats like Nicholas Burns and Robert Gates had earlier visited India to exert pressure on the government for materialisation of the 123 Agreement. They are now threatening that if the nuclear deal was not signed, our deals with Russia and France would also be blocked," Bardhan said.
The Left would not allow the government to undermine the country's sovereignty, self-determination and self reliance by entering into a strategic partnership with the US, he said.
Dubbing the Union budget as "election-oriented statistical jugglery," he said the government was silent on how burning issues like price rise were going to be tackled.
Announcement of debt waiver would not help farmers greatly as it was done without enough preparation like creating a debt relief commission and new loan schemes at lower rates, he said.
Accusing the UPA Government of ignoring farmers for the last four years, he said 30 per cent of farmers in India were indebted to private money lenders and speculators.
On the possibilities of a third front, he said the Left was now aiming to give shape to a "third alternative," based on pro-people programmes as opposed to the
Talbott questions BJP's opposition
New Delhi: Questioning the BJP for its opposition to the nuclear deal, former US diplomat Strobe Talbott has said that the Vajpayee-led government was ready to settle for much less than what has been offered by the Bush administration, remarks dubbed as ignorant by the BJP.
"The Clinton Administration negotiated with the BJP-led government on the nuclear issue, and knowing what the goals of my Indian interlocutors at work at that time and seeing how those goals compare with the current Indian government has gotten out of President Bush by way of the civil nuclear deal, I can't understand how is that the BJP could oppose the deal as it obviously does," he said in an interview with a private television channel.
"I think half (of what) the Clinton Administration (has) been prepared to offer the BJP-led government that we were dealing with, the deal that President Bush was willing to make with Manmohan Singh and company, the Indian side (then) would have gone for it," said Talbott, known in India for the two-year marathon talks with the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh.
The famed 14 rounds of talks, that took place in seven countries spanning four continents, were instrumental in putting back on rails the Indo-US ties strained due to India's series of nuclear tests in May 1998.
BJP hit back at Talbott saying that the NDA government had not held any discussions with him on the nuclear issue. "I am surprised by his statement because during the last two years of NDA government, he was no more the US Deputy Secretary of State. We had no discussions on the lines of the current nuclear deal and the 123 Agreement," senior BJP leader and former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said.
NDA never pushed for any `deal': BJP
New Delhi: BJP hit back at Talbott saying that the NDA government had not held any discussions with him on the nuclear issue. "I am surprised by his statement because during the last two years of NDA government, he was no more the US Deputy Secretary of State. We had no discussions on the lines of the current nuclear deal and the 123 Agreement," senior BJP leader and former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said.
Sinha said the NDA government 'never pushed' for anything related to the current Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation. "Our deliberations with the US government only focused Next Steps of Strategic Partnership (NSSP)," Sinha said.
"Our position has always been that our relations with the US will always remain cordial even if the nuclear deal falls through," he said. "In our time, as all the evidence will show, we were discussing peripheral issues like safety of nuclear plants etc. There was no draft of the kind like the 123 Agreement of the present government," the former minister said.
"We were not negotiating a deal of the kind which has been negotiated by the UPA government," Sinha said.
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