National

Amar Singh sees victory for India

NEW DELHI: The Samajwadi Party has described the NSG waiver for India’s nuclear commerce as a great victory for the country and said it would help in its development.

“India needs development and not nuclear bombs,” SP general secretary Amar Singh said soon after the NSG approved the waiver in Vienna. Mr. Singh criticised the Opposition parties for “beating about the bush.”

Quoting the former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, he said India required no more nuclear tests as the previous two tests had proved that the country was a nuclear-capable state.

Nationalist Congress Party spokesman D.P. Tripathi also welcomed the news, saying it was expected. “This consensus is going to be the basis for wider international consensus,” he said.

At a press conference here, Bahujan Samaj Party president and U.P. Chief Minister Mayawati accused the Congress-led UPA government of deliberately concealing facts and conditions relating to the nuclear deal.

She expressed the apprehension that the nuclear deal with the U.S. would compromise the country’s independent foreign policy and mean India’s entry to the discriminatory Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime through the back door.

The BSP leader alleged that the deal was being hurried through without taking the people and major political parties into confidence and asserted that it was against national interest. She said that the ground work for the deal had been done during the BJP regime at the Centre and charged the Congress with only following the footsteps of the BJP-led NDA government.

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