Date:03/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/03/stories/2008090352261300.htm

National

Strategic ties with U.S. will take India Pakistan’s way: Karat

Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said on Tuesday that the India-U.S. strategic partnership, of which the civilian nuclear deal was a component, would put India in the same position as Pakistan where the civilian government had little control over the dealings between its Army and the U.S. armed forces.

Inaugurating a national seminar on the nuclear deal organised by the AKG Centre for Research and Studies here, Mr. Karat cited a recent meeting between the U.S. defence services chief and his Pakistani counterpart Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on board the USS Abraham Lincoln as an event that showed that the civilian government had little control over the dealings between the U.S. and the Pakistan armed forces.

“This is the plight that India should not get into,” Mr. Karat said.

The CPI(M) general secretary accused the UPA government of running away from Parliament because of its realisation that it would be a Herculean task for it to retain its majority in the House. The attempt now was to club the monsoon and winter sessions.

“It might also come up with the claim that since the Speaker had not prorogued the brief trust vote session on July 22, the session beginning in October will be a continuation of the last session.

“However, whatever the government might say or do, it will have to go to the people much before the nuclear deal is finalised.

“It will be in the court of the people that the final decision about the deal will be taken,” Mr. Karat said.

He said the Left had no illusion about the final shape the nuclear deal would take or about the ‘unconditional or clean waiver’ being talked about in the context of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting. All the conditions that the NSG countries and the U.S. wanted were already implicit in the deal.

All that some of these countries wanted was to make them more explicit so that they could hold India to account on a future date. The UPA government was striving for a so-called ‘clean waiver’ only to sell the deal to the people, the CPI(M) leader said.