New Delhi, July 29: NDA leaders have told president Pratibha Patil that the Manmohan Singh government has “completely reversed India’s strategic and foreign policy positions, much to the detriment of the nation”.Emerging after handing a memorandum to the president, BJP leader LK Advani said the NDA urged president Patil to intervene and prevent some of the agreements that were yet to be signed.
Beginning with the joint declaration issued after prime minister Manmohan Singh met Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani in Sharm-el-Sheikh, the memorandum said it was “the first time that a joint statement contains a unilateral reference by Pakistan to threats in Balochistan,” suggesting that India was fomenting trouble in Pakistan. “Indian negotiators and the PM have brought Balochistan to the centrestage of Indo-Pak dialogue,” the memorandum said.The NDA also took up delinking of dialogue with cross-border terrorism. “Even if terrorism is to continue from Pakistani soil, this will not deter dialogue. The statement of the foreign secretary… reduces India’s diplomacy to a laughing stock,” it said.
The memorandum also criticised India agreeing, during US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s visit, to allow the US to inspect India’s defence installations whenever it purchases defence equipment.
The NDA also took up dilution of India’s stand at the meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) in Italy. India has conventionally held that polluting nations must bear the brunt when it comes to countering global warming and bear the cost of alternative technology. But this stand was softened in the final draft, which India signed. During Clinton’s visit, the environment minister tried to reiterate the conventional position, but US negotiators reminded him what India had agreed at MEF.
The memorandum also mentioned the apprehensions expressed, when the Indo-US N-deal was executed, that India would be compelled to sign NPT and CTBT. The PM had assured no such condition would be enforced.But at the recent meeting of G-8 nations, the members resolved to make signing of NPT a condition before enrichment and re-processing technologies could be supplied to India.
All these events raise serious doubts that India’s foreign policy is no longer independent, the NDA said.
–Agencies