We had warned government to be cautious aabout China, Left parties on Indo-US nuclear deal, says FINS chief

New Delhi [India], August 3 (ANI): With a new book stating that China used its "close connections" with Left parties in India to build opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal, FINS president Lt Gen DB Shekatkar (retired) said on Tuesday that they had warned that the Indian government to be cautious of China and the communist parties in the country "because they will not let this nuclear deal happen".
Forum for Integrated National Security (FINS) is a think-tank based in India working on national security-related issues.
Speaking to ANI, Lt Gen Shekatkar (retired) said when UPA was in power, around 40 per cent of the stake in the government was of the Left parties.
"You may call it CPI, CPM or anything but their ideology was the same. China used them to (try and) scuttle the nuclear deal, that is what Vijay Gokhale mentioned in his book. He may not have clearly mentioned many things. I am saying because diplomatic language is different," he said.
"I have been working with FINS since 2003. We at FINS also studied that China would try to interfere in this deal and we had warned the then government about it. We had warned that the Indian government should be cautious of China and the communist parties within India because they will not let this nuclear deal happen. We had said that they will try their best to make sure this deal does not happen and that is what they did. We informed the government and it might have reached to the foreign ministry, defence ministry and related people that time," he added.
He maintained effort was made to pressurize the Indian government through Left parties.
"The Chinese made Left parties a medium to do this. Through that medium, they tried to pressurize the Indian government. They made domestic political interference against India's long-term interest by using Leftist people," Shekatkar alleged.
Asked whether the government responded to the recommendations given by the Forum, Shekatkar said, "In such a matter government does not respond. It has been going on till now and it will continue like this."
CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Tuesday said that claims in former Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale's book about China using its "close connections" with the Left parties to build opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal were "completely false" and they had opposed the deal to safeguard the interests of the country.
Talking to media persons here, he said the stance of Left parties on the nuclear deal during the first UPA government had "no connection with China".
"We even did not have any discussion with China. There was not even any need to talk to China. If China was opposing the deal, then why it allowed India a waiver in the Nuclear Supplier Group. In the Nuclear Supplier Group, every decision is taken unanimously. It means China had no objections to the nuclear deal," Yechury told reporters here.
"So it is clear that nuclear power was a gimmick to draw India as military and strategic ally of the US. Today, India has become a junior subordinate partner of the US in military and strategic affairs. Our isolation in Afghanistan is testimony to that. Our foreign policy is now integrated with their foreign policy," he added.
Yechury claimed the world sees India as a "puppet of America".
"To safeguard the country from this scenario we had opposed the Indo-US nuclear deal," Yechury said.
According to media reports, the book, 'The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India', written by Gokhale, says that China used its "close connections" with Left parties domestic "to build" opposition to the nuclear deal. (ANI)