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Pawar: government must not thrust nuclear deal on anyone

New Delhi: The UPA government should “not thrust” the India-U.S. nuclear deal on anyone if the Left failed to play ball as the country needs stability, Union Minister Sharad Pawar has said.

Asking the government to take a rational approach on the nuclear deal, he said: “We should try our level best to convince our colleagues, but if we are not in a position to convince... not getting total support... majority in Parliament, then we have to take a rational approach.”

“We should not thrust it on anyone. The country requires stability and country wants development,” he said in an interview to Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN’s Devil’s Advocate.

Mr. Pawar, however, said that he would be happy “if the nuclear deal goes through as it is an alternative method of generation of energy, which is the need of the hour and is also environment friendly.”

He said if the nuclear deal became operational, it would add to the strength of the country, but not at the cost of country’s stability and economy. At the same time Mr. Pawar said, that the Left parties which are opposing the deal are “honest to their thinking.” Mr. Pawar’s views are significant as his remarks have come at a time when the government has approached the IAEA for arriving at a nuclear safeguards agreement.

The Left parties, which have been opposing the deal, have made it clear that the government should consult them once the talks with IAEA were over. Mr. Pawar did not agree with the suggestion that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had failed to deliver the goods. He said it was wrong to blame them “as the government is not made of one or two parties and there are Left parties which have some different thinking.” — PTI

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