Left looks up to Oct 22 meeting on N-deal

Guwahati, Oct 16 (UNI) CPI(M) Polit Bureau and Rajya Sabha member Sitaram Yechury today said the Left parties would look to the October 22 meeting with the Congress to know the latter's latest stand on the Nuclear deal with the US.

''We have come to know that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has spoken to President George W Bush, informing about the difficulties in operationalising the deal. But we will look forward to the October 22 meeting to know what the Congress tells us about future action on the deal. That will decide the future course of action from us, '' he said.

Mr Yechury was here in connection with the 30th year of the CPI(M) Assam Unit's mouthpiece ''Gansakti'' and was addressing a gathering on the current political scenario of the country.

Regarding the mid-term election, he iterated that Left did not consider it as an agenda. '' Our agenda is nuclear issue, not the mid-term poll. It is the Congress, which will decide what way they will take the country, '' he added.

Justifying the opposition of the Nuclear deal, he said the US was trying to economically colonise the whole of the country. '' The amount of money the Government is ready to spend for the nuclear energy, which is again three per cent of the whole energy needs, the country can get large number of schools and hospitals, '' he added.

Mr Yechury did not agree that the deal would help India overcome its power crisis or meet growing energy demands, as producing nuclear energy will be very expensive.

The heavy expenditure, which India wanted to incur on power production through nuclear energy, could be used for opening nearly 250,000 new Navodaya schools or 20,000 new government hospitals of AIIMS standard, he said.

'' Moreover we can produce that three per cent energy from our own resources, '' he said.

He asserted that through Hyde Act, the US would continue to dictate the foreign policy of India and that was not acceptable to the people of India. '' The US want that our foreign policy should replicate them. Beside to keep the nuclear deal in operation, the US President has to give a certificate to the Congress telling that India has been behaving well, '' he stated.

He said, '' Despite the country's brilliant GDP as well as sensex crossing 19,000 figure, ninety per cent people of India are outside the purview of these fantastic figures. We have the largest number of poor people, largest unemployed and largest uneducated youths. '' Harping on the fallacy of the US foreign policy, he said their foreign policy was proven wrong in every field. '' Be it Iraq or Iran they have been proved repeatedly wrong. We do not want Indian Prime Minister's to act according to the US President. '' Taking a jibe on the BJP, he said the Setusamundaram project was initiated by the BJP. It started during the NDA regime and sanction was given by none other than Uma Bharati. Now they were raising the same issue when it was conclusively proved that those bridges were not man made.

Respecting individual belief on Lord Ram, Mr Yechury said, ''The BJP despite being involved with the whole project from the beginning was targeting to make it an election issue believing that there would be a mid-term poll.'' ''We are not for mid-term poll neither is it in our agenda. Our agenda is Nuclear deal,'' he said.

UNI