The UPA government today is like a patient in the ICU room. If anyone talks about that patient, the first question naturally asked is, “Is he going to survive or not?” This situation has not been brought about by the Opposition, not by the NDA, not even by the Leftists with whom I disagree otherwise. This situation has been invited for itself by the government itself... and Mr Prime Minister, I am sorry to say, by you personally.

It is not in our nature to destabilise an elected government. You may do it; you have done it with Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda, I K Gujral; and you have done it with Vajpayee in 1999 when we were defeated just by one vote, and that too a vote of a person who had ceased to be an MP, and became a chief minister in another state. Therefore, I am drawing a distinction between defeating a government and destabilising the government.

I feel that the deal is not a deal between two sovereign countries; it seems to me to be a kind of an agreement between two individuals and if one of the individuals happens to be the prime minister of our country, he thinks that nothing else is more important than to fulfil this agreement. Mr Prime Minister, it does not give me happiness to find that a deal is being gone into in a way which makes India a junior partner in the agreement.

I do not want the world to be a unipolar world as it has become now. It must be a multipolar world and in that multipolar world, I want to see India as the principal pole. And in order to be a principal pole, you cannot agree that these countries are nuclear weapon states whereas India is permanently a non-nuclear weapon state; and this is in the agreement. This is not only in the agreement, but also in the proposed draft sent to the IAEA; it is on the basis of a chapter which relates to the non-nuclear weapon states.

... contd.