February 15, 2006

Press Statement

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:

The decision of the BJP to support the government’s stand on the Iran nuclear issue is not surprising. The Vajpayee government was the most pro-American government India has seen since independence. It was the BJP-led government which forged a strategic alliance with Israel which acts as the gendarme for US imperialism in West Asia.

The BJP has no objection to the fact that Israel has 200 nuclear warheads in its arsenal with the blessings of the United States and the West. Instead, they are raising the bogey of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Unlike the BJP, the Left had extended its support to the NAM formulation in the IAEA board meeting on February 2-4 that the middle east should be a nuclear weapons free zone.

The question is whether the UPA government wants to be on the same wave-length as the BJP and go along with the ulterior motives of the United States to target Iran. It is in India’s national interests that we maintain our good relations with Iran given our vital stakes in the region. The CPI(M) reiterates its stand that India should not become a party to any referral of Iran to the UN Security Council at the behest of the United States and the EU-3 and the matter should be resolved within the framework of the IAEA.