‘PM couldn’t extract from IAEA what he promised’

The Left on Friday charged the UPA for hiding the draft IAEA safeguards agreement from the country because it only confirms the communists’s worst fears: that India has not been able to extract what the Prime Minister promised in Parliament.

The Left said the government is about “to bind India’s entire civilian nuclear energy programme to IAEA safeguards into perpetuity without getting concrete assurances for uninterrupted fuel supplies, right to build strategic reserves and take corrective measures in are supplies are stopped”.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat who addressed the media party Politburo member Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s D. Raja and Forward Bloc secretary G. Devarajan were present said: “There is nothing unexpected in the text. Nothing that they (the government) claimed they will get from the IAEA, have they got.”

He said the Left continues to oppose the safeguards agreement because it paves the way for the 123 Agreement. He said the agreement is rooted in the US law — the Hyde Act — that “does not allow fuel supply assurance”. Karat said the IAEA is only a regulatory body and cannot ensure fuel supplies to India.

He had met JD-S MP Veerendra Kumar, who allegedly assured Karat that he would vote against the deal even if his party whip goes with the UPA. The JD-S has not revealed which way it will swing.