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Sinha: Advani’s suggestion is worth examining

New Delhi: Senior BJP leader L.K. Advani’s remark that domestic laws can be changed to protect India’s nuclear options were only a suggestion for the party to examine, his colleague Yashwant Sinha has said.

“Mr. Advani said this as a suggestion which is worth examining. Now, we will examine it,” Mr. Sinha said in Karan Thapar’s “Devil’s Advocate” programme on CNN-IBN.

“It’s only a suggestion. If it works, fine. If it does not work, fine,” the former External Affairs Minister, who has been opposing the nuclear deal with the U.S. because of the Hyde Act, said.

He denied that Mr. Advani’s remark that the Atomic Energy Act should be amended contradicted the party’s original stand, saying a renegotiation of the deal, which the former Deputy Prime Minister had asked for, would then be carried out on the basis of changed laws. “I am convinced that he has not contradicted himself,” Mr. Sinha said, adding the BJP would itself go for a renegotiation if voted to power.

Domestic laws could be changed to make it clear to the international community that India would retain its right to nuclear testing and that it would have no impact on strategic agreements with other countries.

India, he said, could assert its nuclear testing right by incorporating it in the Atomic Energy Act. “... once we have received supplies for nuclear energy from any country, it will not be returned.”

The BJP leader said Mr. Advani had been misinterpreted in the news report on his comments in Hyderabad on the nuclear accord. “A section of the media, which is campaigning for the deal,” is trying to create confusion, Mr. Sinha alleged. — PTI

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