NEW DELHI, 5 December 2007 — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh categorically rejected the charge that India refrained from signing a nuclear agreement with Russia because of external pressure. “There was no pressure on New Delhi against signing the agreement with Moscow on the supply of four additional nuclear reactors for a facility in Tamil Nadu.
“This is false propaganda,” Manmohan said while intervening in a debate in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, on the India-US civilian nuclear deal. The response came after Bharatiya Janata Party (MP) Yashwant Sinha charged that the deal for the Russian reactors was not signed during the prime minister’s visit to Moscow last month due to US pressure.
“We had the draft of the agreement ready. It has always been understood that the agreement could be operationalized only after the approval of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” Manmohan said. “The Russians fully understood this,” he said.
During the debate, while left bloc members warned the government that it would be a “dangerous folly” to proceed with the deal, they did not endorse BJP’s suggestion that they should withdraw support to the government if it went ahead with the deal. Reacting to BJP legislator Murli Manohar Joshi’s call to join his party in pulling down the government over the deal, Communist Part of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury said: “We cannot allow you (BJP) to come to power riding on our shoulder.”
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to India David C. Mulford said yesterday the US “continues to encourage” New Delhi to complete the process of taking forward the nuclear deal, which will be “good for India, good for the world and good for the US.”
The US envoy said the US was “respectful of India’s democratic process and will continue to be,” but reminded New Delhi of the strong bipartisan support for the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress last year.
“Our belief is that this initiative is good for India, good for the world and good for the US,” Mulford told business leaders and media at a function here to felicitate him for getting a top US award for exemplary diplomatic service.
“Following the completion of negotiations on the 123 agreement, we continue to encourage India to move forward and complete the process that President (George) Bush and Prime Minister (Manmohan) Singh have delineated and which when completed will bring profound economic and non-proliferation benefits,” he said.
