NEW DELHI, 29 September 2005 — India’s left parties yesterday asked the government to assure the international community that it would not allow the Iran nuclear issue to be raised at the United Nations Security Council.
“We demanded that India should assure the world that we will not allow the issue to be raised at the Security Council,” senior Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury told reporters after a hour-long breakfast meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Yechury, along with senior colleagues from the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), had discussions on the issue with Manmohan, Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran.
Manmohan’s United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government is heavily dependent on the support of the left parties.
Left parties feel India’s vote at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna “was not of any consequence to the final outcome”, Yechury said, “It was a positioning vote which unfortunately gives the impression that India is aligning with the US on the matter.” Yechury said India’s vote at the IAEA went against the UPA’s Common Minimum Program agreed upon with its left partners that says the country would follow an independent foreign policy and oppose “a hegemonistic approach” by any country.
Defense Minister Mukherjee acknowledged there were differences with the left parties on the issue. “Different parties have different perceptions,” he said.
Meanwhile, Iran’s ambassador to India, S.Z. Yaghoubi, met Saran Tuesday to express his country’s “deep sense of hurt and disappointment” at India’s stand, IANS news agency reported, quoting diplomatic sources.
