NEW DELHI, Aug 13: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday defended the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement before parliament, saying it had secured Delhi's right to conduct future nuclear tests, but the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the claim was a mere white lie.
Within minutes of the prime minister's detailed statement in parliament, the party dismissed it as a “bundle of the same untruths, half-truths and pure white lies.”
Considering that the government's crucial support comes from the Left Front, whose members too have opposed the deal, Dr Singh's UPA government is effectively in a minority on the issue.
If a vote is allowed to be forced, the government could be embarrassed but may not fall. However, sources in the Left Front said they were not keen to have a vote, but would prefer to walk out of the house in a symbolic protest. A two-day debate is scheduled on Tuesday and Thursday.
The BJP, which had shouted slogans and tried to disrupt the prime minister's speech said it would continue to oppose the deal in parliament and outside.
“If the deal is signed and sealed and etched in stone, why does he want parliament to go through the charade of a debate on it?”, former BJP ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie asked.
They pointed out that in his eight-page statement, the prime minister had conveniently ignored the sequence of legislative action in the United States and pretended as if the Hyde Act does not exist. “This is nothing but an ostrich-like attitude.”
They also accused Dr Singh of “clearly misleading the nation” by not revealing that the agreement was silent on issues like annual certification by the US President and that India's right to conduct nuclear tests would be governed by the provisions of the Hyde Act, passed by the US Congress in December 2006.
The BJP leaders reiterated that the placing of indigenous fast breeder reactors under the safeguards of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was an entirely ‘unnecessary commitment’ made by the UPA Government in the separation plan.
“Such a commitment will have an impact on India's three-stage nuclear programme as also on her research and development programme,” they said.
In his speech, Dr Singh said the agreement when brought into effect, will open the way for full civil nuclear energy cooperation between India and the United States. “We have negotiated this agreement as an equal partner, precisely because of the achievements of our scientists and technologists in overcoming the barriers placed around us in the past. This is an agreement based on the principle of mutual benefit.”
The concept of full civil nuclear cooperation has been clearly enshrined in the agreement, Dr Singh said. “The agreement stipulates that such cooperation will include nuclear reactors and aspects of the associated nuclear fuel cycle, including technology transfer on industrial or commercial scale. It would also include development of a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of our reactors.”
He said a significant aspect of the agreement is that India has secured its right to reprocess US origin spent fuel. Special fissionable material that may be separated can be utilised in national facilities under IAEA safeguards. Thus the interests of India's three stage nuclear programme have been protected, the prime minister said.