7-24-05, 8:15 am

(The Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of India has issued the following statement)

The CPI expresses serious concern over the India-US Joint Statement signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the US President George W. Bush on July 18, 2005. It is ironic that in this Statement both have agreed 'to create an international environment conducive to promotion of democratic values'. In the light of the continued US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan it is quite obvious that US desires approval for imposition of democracy through force.

It should be noted that the US has neither supported India's claim to UN Security Council membership nor recognized it as a nuclear weapons power but merely as a 'state with advanced nuclear technology'. The US has only agreed to consult with its partners in the Nuclear Suppliers Group and try to get an agreement from the US Congress to provide fuel supplies for India's nuclear reactors at Tarapur. In return for these ambiguous and limited assurances, India has agreed to continue its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, separate its civilian and nuclear facilities and open its civilian facilities for inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, including under the intrusive Additional Protocol, working with the US for concluding a Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty, as well as adhering to the Missile Technology Control Regime [MCTR] and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines. This amounts to a unilateral reversal of India's earlier nuclear policy without any prior discussion in Parliament, the UPA or with the Left whereas the US will have to seek agreement from its Congress. While the CPI welcomes the moratorium on nuclear tests and inspections by the IAEA but this should have been done through international agreements with the IAEA and similar international organizations, not through a bilateral agreement with the US which itself has been guilty of nuclear proliferation in the past to South Africa and Israel, and continues to discriminate in providing technology and arms in favour of Israel and against India. India has consistently argued that the NPT and associated regimes like the MTCR, NSG guidelines and the proposed FMCT are discriminatory. It should be noted that though India 'reciprocally' agreed to stop nuclear testing there was no such commitment by the United States. Nor has there been any reference whatsoever to nuclear disarmament to which India has long been committed in contrast to the US administration which has completely abandoned policies of nuclear disarmament or restraint.

The CPI strongly believes that this Joint Statement is a continuation of the pro-US shift in India's foreign policy that was initiated by the Vajpayee regime and was carried forward earlier marked by the June 28th Indo-US Defence Framework which the CPI along with the entire Left have already severely criticized as marking a deviation from India's independent foreign policy of non-alignment and of the CMP. It appears that these two last agreements made by the Indian government leadership in the US in the last few weeks have been made without adequate discussion in the UPA and with the Left. The CPI cannot accept such arbitrary functioning by the UPA government in such matters of vital national interest.

The CPI strongly opposes this Joint Statement as well as the earlier Indo-US Defence Framework and the policy measures that flow from it. The CPI together with its Left allies will register its principled opposition to this Statement and related agreements in Parliament and in all fora.

S.S. Bhusari Office Secretary

From Solidarity Network