Cong defends approaching IAEA for safeguards agreement

“If we lose trust vote, then the government will withdraw the request from IAEA for convening a meeting of its Board of Governors,” Moily told reporters in New Delhi.

Claiming that the UPA has not lost majority, he said, “It is we who have volunteered for a trust vote, we are saying that we will prove our majority. Nobody has asked us.”

Responding to Left parties’ criticism, the senior leader said it was ‘wrong’ to interpret the request for convening the meeting of Board of Governors of IAEA as going to the atomic watchdog.

The government decided to release the draft text of the safeguards agreement after the IAEA decided to ‘de-restrict’ the document, he said as questions were raised why the document was not released earlier despite demands from the Left and opposition parties.

“The position (on the text) has changed. It was a privileged document … and is not released to the public domain until after conclusions are taken…IAEA has now decided to de-restrict the text and now we are at liberty to release it,” he said.

Earlier, another party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi accused the Left and Opposition of ‘again misleading the nation’ on the nuclear deal, alleging they were trying to make a ‘mountain when not even a molehill exists’.

“They know very well that Parliamentary support would be initiated well before the Board of Governors of the IAEA meet to approve the agreement. Only circulation among members is being done now, ” Singhvi said.

He alleged the Left was misleading the nation because they deliberately want to delay even the circulation.

Replying to a question, he dismissed suggestions that the move would in any way affect the trust vote by the government in Parliament.

The Left parties had on Wednesday said government’s move to get the draft nuclear safeguards pact circulated to IAEA Board of Governors was ‘expected’, especially after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s remarks that the nuclear watchdog will be approached ‘very soon’.

The BJP had expressed surprise over how the draft was circulated when External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said that the government would approach the IAEA in the next step to operationalise the deal only after winning a trust vote.