Even as an Indian team of officials have set out for Vienna for the second round of India-specific safeguard negotiations with the IAEA secretariat, the Left parties have once again raised the ante with both the CPI(M) and the CPI on Friday, reiterating that initialing the agreement could be fatal for the UPA government.
?We have told the government that it should not go ahead to the IAEA board of governors before discussing it in the joint Left-UPA committee,? CPI general secretary AB Bardhan said. Reiterating that the UPA government should heed to the ?sense of the House,?, Bardhan added, ?We do not want the deal. There is no doubt about it. Arithmetically, the sense of House is that the majority of the members are opposed to the deal.?
Meanwhile, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said, ?The Left is not in favour of India forging a strategic alliance with the US. We don?t want the government to proceed with the agreement,? he told a magazine in an interview.
In the meantime, in an extension of war of words within the Left Front in West Bengal and Kerala, CPI general secretary AB Bardhan said here on Friday that the CPI(M) should try to be more “accommodative” and “flexible” while working within a front. The veteran leader also refused to join an issue with Karat over the “deadline” for talks with the UPA on the nuclear deal. Karat had said last week that the government must stop all negotiations with the IAEA by the end of December.
“I don’t wish to make any comment on another party’s statement,” Bardhan said.
