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Rajnath: BJP opposed to unbalanced provisions

Neena Vyas

“Our objection to nuclear deal is different from that of the Left”

BANGALORE: Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh said here on Friday that his party’s opposition to the nuclear deal was limited to those unbalanced provisions in the deal that endanger the nuclear sovereignty of India.

The BJP, Mr. Singh said, wanted to once again make it clear its opposition to the nuclear deal was different from the opposition by the Left parties.

The BJP’s limited opposition was also made clear by party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad when he diluted the earlier party stand “we will renegotiate the nuclear deal” to “that option [to renegotiate] remains open and we need not say it again.”

The attempt to once again clarify the party’s limited opposition was being seen by some party members as a way of meeting criticism from some party supporters that the BJP finds itself with strange bedfellows on this question: the Left and China.

Mr. Singh himself pointed out that a recent article in People’s Daily [of China] had said China needed to conduct further tests, and if India’s right to test was surrendered, it would have serious consequences for our security.

In his presidential address to party delegates at the national executive committee meeting here, Mr. Singh mentioned the latest revelations that assured [nuclear] fuel supply was not seen by United States of America as a legally binding commitment but only an assurance. His remark was that “assurances die with men and regimes, [but] binding agreements bind nations.”

If the deal means different things to different people and to India and the U.S. would it mean that it could be breached by the more powerful party to the deal, Mr. Singh asked.

The BJP also questioned the conversion, as it claimed, of a unilateral moratorium on further testing offered by the Vajpayee government immediately after Pokhran II in 1998 into a multilateral international commitment as it finds a mention in the NSG waiver document. The party president did not mention that Mr. Vajpayee had also made this unilateral commitment at the United Nations general assembly soon after Pokhran-II.

Mr. Singh insisted on describing the Manmohan Singh government as a minority government and questioned its right to commit the country to an international treaty.

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