'UPA hiding something in Indo-US nuclear deal'

Bangalore, Oct 7: Former Minister of State for External Affairs and Janata Dal (United) leader Digvijay Singh today accused the UPA Government at the Centre of hiding something detrimental to the country's interests while going ahead with the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.

Speaking to newspersons here, he said that despite knowing the fact that the US had never been a friend of India in its nuclear programme, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went ahead to forge a deal for which the country had begun to pay dearly.

''The civilian nuclear deal that UPA has signed with the US is not in the interest of the country. The country has been forced to dilute its nuclear capability because of this deal, which in the long run will not be of much use,'' he claimed.

Mr Singh said the country produced just three per cent of its total energy production through nuclear power and if at all the deal came through, the production from this might go up to seven per cent at the maximum in the long run.

He said that due to this deal, the country had to lose its trusted ally, Iran, which had all along supported the country in the Kashmir dispute in the international fora. Besides, there was absolutely no need to have truck with the US in such important security aspect as it had even asked Russia to stop supply of nuclear fuel to India a few months back, the former Minister opined.

The separation of civilian and security based nuclear progrmme would cost the country 40 billion US Dollars which was not worth compared to the power likely to be produced from the US nuclear fuel. Instead, that money could be used to produce 20,000 MW of hydel power by controlling the five rivers that flow from Nepal and cause floods in Bihar every year, he said.

Mr Singh said the NDA had initiated a debate in Parliament, highlighting the pitfalls of the deal in a 19-point submission in the House. ''The Prime Minister who was first not ready to even talk about the deal with the Opposition later conceded to discuss the points in Parliament.'' The spirit of the points raised by the NDA highlighted the question of sovereignty of the country as the deal made the country ''subjugate'' to the US, India should be independent in its nuclear programme and the Australian protocol of going to the US Congress to explain their nuclear programme every year should not apply to India. ''Our demands ultimately worked and the Prime Minister who went to Havana for the NAM summit did not go to New York, which was just three hours away, to attend the UN General Assembly,'' he claimed.

Mr Singh opposed the proposal to send Indian troops to strife-torn Afghanistan. ''Sending troops to a trouble-torn country will send a wrong signal. We will never allow the country to fight for others as this hurts national sentiments. Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi did this earlier and the erstwhile NDA Government was the only Government that opposed the US invitation to go to Iraq.

This reflected the strong foreign policy we practiced during a time when the US used Islamic countries as its air bases,'' he added.

UNI

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