NEW DELHI, 5 May 2007 — Indian deputies denounced yesterday a letter written by a group of US lawmakers to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to “sever” military ties with Iran and terminate all cooperation in the energy sector before going ahead with the nuclear deal negotiations.
Indian MPs from both left and right united yesterday to denounce US legislators for what they said was an attempt to influence foreign policy through the nuclear trade deal.
The lawmakers criticized letters written by seven Democratic and Republican legislators warning Manmohan that New Delhi’s ties with Iran had potential to harm India-US relations and the nuclear deal.
“We must send a very strong message to the US senators and Congressmen that this will not prevail,” Yashwant Sinha, foreign minister in the previous government, told Parliament.
“We are not going to tolerate this,” he said.
The angry reactions from Sinha and his colleagues in the upper house of Parliament came after details of the latest letter from the Congressmen were published in an Indian newspaper yesterday.
The letter — signed by Democrat Tom Lantos, chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, senior Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and others — was the third, and strongest, in recent days expressing concern over relations between New Delhi and Tehran.
They urged India to end what they said was “military cooperation” with old friend Iran and terminate participation in the development of Tehran’s energy sector.
“I would like to express our very, very strong protest... at what we can only term the temerity of some US senators in insulting our honorable prime minister,” said Brinda Karat of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, which shores up the ruling coalition. The letter was “nothing but an open threat to the sovereignty of this country,” she said.
In a separate statement, her party said it had repeatedly pointed out that the nuclear cooperation agreement would seriously damage India’s foreign policy and strategic autonomy. The CPM yesterday asked the government to clarify in Parliament the status of negotiations on the nuclear deal and the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project in the wake of the reported letter from US lawmakers.
“With the 123 agreement being negotiated and the US mounting steady pressure, it is imperative that the government makes a statement in parliament about both the status of the negotiations and on how the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project is progressing,” the CPI-M politburo said in a statement here. “Parliament and the people have to be informed on these two vital issues,” it demanded.
The US lawmakers’ letter comes close on the heels of Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon’s visit here for talks aimed at putting the 123 negotiations back on track.
When asked a question on this issue, Menon had clarified that India’s relations with Iran were not in contravention of the UNSC resolutions.
The nuclear deal aims to overturn a three-decade US ban on the sale of nuclear reactors and fuel to New Delhi — to help meet India’s soaring energy needs — even though it has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has tested nuclear weapons. It is considered the showpiece of a new friendship between the two nations and was approved by the US Congress in December.
But it has run into rough weather over a bilateral agreement that will govern nuclear trade with India saying that the pact included new conditions unacceptable to it.
Officials of the two countries claimed extensive progress over the deal after talks in Washington this week and are due to negotiate again in New Delhi this month.
Indian Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi said the government would continue to remain transparent.
“I would like to make it clear that our government is not in a position to make any kind of compromises that would affect the sovereignty of the country in any way,” he told Parliament.
