Date:21/11/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/11/21/stories/2007112162511500.htm

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UPA will pay the price: Yechury

“If Left is betrayed on nuclear deal”

New Delhi: After giving a go-ahead for negotiations with IAEA on the nuclear deal, the CPI(M) on Tuesday bluntly told the UPA government that it would have to pay a “political price” if it “betrays” the agreement reached with the Left parties on the issue.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury said the Left parties allowed the government to proceed with the talks after an understanding that it will have to report back to the UPA-Left committee on the issue.

“The moment they defy, betray this understanding, remember.... they will have to pay the political price,” Mr. Yechury told Karan Thapar’s India Tonight programme on the CNBC.

He said the government has assured “not only to the Left but the people of the country” that it would get back to the UPA-Left panel after the IAEA negotiations.

Asked what would happen if the government decides to ink the deal saying IAEA safeguards were in the interest of the nation, he said, “by that time, the government will be off. Elections will be there.”

“If the government’s interest is not in seeing themselves in... if that is the case then the government should necessarily go. If the deal is more important than being in government, let it go,” Mr. Yechury said.

He said though the Left has given the green signal for talks with the IAEA, the CPI(M) is “sceptical” about the outcome as objections raised by them cannot be addressed by the international body.

Mr. Yechury said his party had no “ideological predilections” on the issue of nuclear deal.

“Remove the Hyde Act, remove the conditions of Hyde Act... in that it is not our ideological predilection but of the U.S. We are not opposed to the U.S. But we are opposed to American imperialism,” he said.

He said the presumption that the Hyde Act applies only to the U.S. was incorrect as the deal was anchored on this legislation.

Mr. Yechury said the Left was persuading the government not to go ahead with the deal which was “not in the interest of the country.

“We raised our objections and the government requested that they be allowed to raise the matter with the IAEA…Therefore, we gave the go-ahead but said before initialising come back to us,” he said. — PTI