UPA hiding something in Indo-US nuclear deal: Digvijay

Bangalore, Oct 7 (UNI) 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 Dollar 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.

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