Nuke deal: Sense of Parliament has to be spelt out, say Left

New Delhi, July 28: Seeking to remove the apprehension that they had given up their hard stand on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Left parties today made it clear that the sense of Parliament has to be clearly spelt out in the government's thinking on the accord which could not be done simply through a suo motu statement.

The Left parties made a strong case for spelling out the sense of Parliament and listed three options for the purpose, in an apparent move to save the UPA government from an embarrassment in the event of a Parliament resolution censuring the Indo-US deal.

Mr Bardhan's comment came after CPI(M) veteran and former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu said yesterday that they would not do anything which could" jeopardise' the government and Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee's having reportedly told the Left leaders on Wednesday that if they persisted with the parliamentary resolution, that would be" end of the UPA government.''

Mr Bardhan said the leaders of the four supporting parties- the CPI(M), CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc- were of the view that Parliament should discuss the matter so that the sense of Parliament as expressed whereby the parameters of the agreement could be defined to counter any pressures and changes sought to be brought about.

While ruling out the need of "any resolution" to express the sentiment of the House, the CPI veteran maintained that the first option could be that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could reply to the discussion in the Parliament, second - the Lok Sabha Speaker could express the sense of Parliament based on the ongoing parleys among the political parties. The third option could be that the PM could come out with a statement removing all the misgivings and apprehensions of the Left parties and other like minded parties.

"We will defintely like to contribute to the preparation of such a statement," Mr Bardhan said. In reply to a specific reply to a question on the difference between a suo motu statement and the" unanimous statement," the Left leader said a suo motu statment was never proceeded by a discussion.

On the repeated query about the much-hyped resolution, Mr Bardhan counter questioned" Where was such a resolution?" There was no talk of the resolution as the parties have to give a notice for such a resolution." Reacting to the newspersons suggestion whether the BJP could also join the efforts to evolve an unanimous agreement, the left leader wanted to know," Why not? they are the main Opposition party.

Today they also walked out on the price rise issue.

Forward Bloc general Secretary Debvrat Biswas said the negotiations conducted with the US, the legislation which had been proposed in the committees of both the House of Representatives and the senate in the US Congress all went to show that many changes had been brought about which were not in tune with those initally spelt out by the PM through his statement in Parlimanet on July 29,2005.

The bill adopted in the House of Representatives also confirmed this fact, the Forward Bloc added.

UNI