AHMEDABAD: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) will not allow the United States to subvert India's indigenous efforts to move from using uranium to thorium as fuel for its fast breeder nuclear reactors, Polit Bureau member and MP Sitaram Yechury said on Saturday.

Mr. Yechury declined to make any comment on the bill on the nuclear deal between the two countries as passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. "We will articulate our views if we see that the final draft of the deal failed to meet the assurances given by the Prime Minister [in Parliament] in protecting the national interest."

Pointing out that India possessed 30 per cent of the world's thorium deposits, he said no country wanted it to develop its own technology to use thorium for its reactors. For, that effort would make India self-sufficient or even surplus in nuclear fuel. He wondered whether the U.S. deal was to prevent India from developing its indigenous technology on thorium.

"Rare honour"

Mr. Yechury was here at the invitation of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, to address a session on `Indian Social and Political Environment' to first year students of the postgraduate management programme. It was a `rare honour' to be invited to the premier institution, he said adding that in the present global economic scenario, leftist ideologies could not be ignored.

Later he spoke to the media and addressed a public meeting as part of Bhagat Singh birth centenary celebrations.

The CPI(M) was not happy with the U.S. bill particularly its "non-binding" clauses. "If they are non-binding, why were they written at all," he asked.

"We will very closely scrutinise what comes of it in the hard negotiations between the two countries now. We will also closely watch India's stand on Iran."

In a frontal attack on Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, who is on a hunger-strike against the West Bengal Government's decision to allocate 997 acres of land at Singur for a Tata car project, Mr. Yechury said it was "purely a political agitation" propped up by "outsiders" without local support. The compensation offered by the CPI(M) Government for land acquisition was "the best in the world."

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail