India sticks to its guns on Iran issue

Times of India:

The UPA government appeared to be heading for a confrontation with Left on Friday over Iran after the Cabinet Committee on Security turned down CPM's demand that India should reverse its stance against Iran for suspected violation of nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Despite a severe assault from the Left, which saw CPM general secretary Prakash Karat holding Manmohan Singh directly responsible for India's vote against Iran at the IAEA meeting in Vienna earlier this week, government seems to be digging its heels on the issue raising the spectre of policy confrontation like the one on the issue of disinvestment in BHEL. READ MORE

It has decided to justify its vote at Vienna by citing how AQ Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and a notorious proliferator, helped Iran further its nuclear ambitions.

The decision on Iran was defended also at the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, where foreign secretary Shyam Saran briefed about the reasons behind the vote at IAEA. Emerging from the meeting, defence minister Pranab Mukherjee rebutted the charge that the Cabinet was not taken into confidence over the vote.

Mukherjee, who enjoys a better rapport with Left leaders, said that the issue was not discussed at the Cabinet because nobody expected that it would lead to a vote.

In a not-so-unrelated development, US president George Bush rang up PM Manmohan Singh to discuss the implementation of the nuclear deal the two countries signed recently. Apart from the fact that it came in the middle of this spat, the conversation took on significance also because of the government's attempt to justify the vote against Iran as necessary for getting the US to keep its part of the bargain, which is expected to result in the flow of nuclear technology and recognition of India as a legitimate nuclear power.