Strategic alliance with US will hurt India: Buddha

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Sunday expressed total opposition to the strategic alliance with the US.

On a day External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee him and CPI(M) patriarch Jyoti Basu in an apparent bid to soften their stand on Indo-US nuclear deal, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Sunday expressed total opposition to the strategic alliance with the US.

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"We are totally opposed to the strategic alliance. We have been asking the government not to go ahead with the strategic alliance. It will hurt us economically, politically and militarily," Bhattacharjee said at a public meeting of the National Federation of Postal Employees here.

Earlier in the day, Mukherjee, also the convener of the 15-member Left-UPA committee on the nuclear deal, conferred with Basu, Bhattacharjee and CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose seeking to end the Left-UPA stand-off over the deal.

The Left has stepped up the heat on the government and has threatened to withdraw support from the UPA government if it operationalises the deal.

The government, on the other hand, had made it clear to Left parties that time may be running out and it was necessary to start negotiation with bodies like IAEA for operationalising the deal.