NEW DELHI, MAY 16: Terming the Left parties’ blockade on the Indo-US nuclear deal as a “success”, CPI(M) on Friday said as the prospects of operationalising the deal “fade away”, the attacks discrediting the party were being stepped up to urge the Government to go ahead with the deal.

Hailing the elections to the Constituent Assembly in Nepal as a setback to the US diplomacy, party general secretary Prakash Karat said these “reverses” had come at a time “when in India opposition to the strategic alliance with the US has made progress with the success registered so far in blocking the Indo-US nuclear deal”.

As a consequence, “the attacks on the CPI(M) are being stepped up as the prospects of the deal being operationalised as per the American deadline fade away. A desperate attempt is being made to urge the Government to go ahead with the nuclear deal ignoring the objections of the Left parties and the entire opposition”, writes Karat in the party organ People’s Democracy.

Karat’s comments come in the backdrop of the Left parties’ straining relations with one of its close associates, the Samajwadi Party, which has expressed its willingness to “consider” the nuclear deal if the UPA Government provides them some “new facts” regarding the deal. Karat says the accusation that his party is blocking the deal at the behest of China is an attempt to “discredit” his party in the backdrop of the “success” that his party has registered so far in blocking the Indo-US nuclear deal.

“One of the worn out charges resurrected to discredit the CPI(M) stand and to argue for going ahead with the deal is the accusation that it is acting at the behest of China,” Karat has written in the article entitled Nepal: Portents for South Asia.

In his article, Karat has criticised the people who, he alleged, were trying to discredit his party for its stand on the nuclear deal.

Alleging that the US tried its best to “wreck” the political process in Nepal, which was initiated by the agreement between the Seven Party Alliance and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in November 2005, he says the results of the elections to the National Assembly have “thwarted” the US plans in the South Asian region.

The Nepal poll results represented a “vital break in the now-familiar pattern of intervention and influence by US imperialism in the affairs of South Asia”, he says, adding “the example of tiny Nepal defending its national sovereignty and standing up to the US dictates should be a lesson for the rest of South Asia”.