Prakash Karat

New Delhi, Feb. 17: The Hyde Act is haunting the nuclear deal again.

The CPM has declared there is nothing new in US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s stand, spelt out last week, that the Hyde Act is binding on the 123 Agreement.

“The Bush administration has maintained that the act is binding on the 123 Agreement and Rice has reiterated it,” CPM general secretary Prakash Karat told The Telegraph.

Karat pointed out that US assistant secretary of state Nicholas Burns had taken the same stance at the “very beginning”.

Asked if the Left, which always warned that the Hyde Act would be binding, felt vindicated at Rice’s comments, Karat suggested that she was only iterating an old position.

“The Bush administration has been saying that there is nothing in the 123 Agreement that is not bound by the Hyde Act. And Rice is only agreeing (repeating) to it.”

The CPM leader suggested that Rice’s remarks — that the US will not support any proposal in the Nuclear Suppliers Group that contradicts the Hyde Act — had been made with an eye on the presidential polls this November.

Asked about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assurances earlier that the act was not binding, Karat said: “It’s (the act) binding on the US and that is the problem.”

The Left parties have argued that the act is built into the 123 Agreement. In a note on the law and its implications sent to the Centre on October 5 last year, they said while the act was an internal US legislation, it became an integral part of the 123 Agreement through Article 2.1, which requires conformity with national laws.

“It is erroneous to claim the Hyde Act is of concern only to the US and not to India. It is correct that once the 123 Agreement is approved by US Congress, it will have precedence over the Hyde Act, but only to the extent that they conflict with each other and not where they do not conflict or cover the same ground,” the note said.

CPM central committee member Nilotpal Basu questioned the Centre’s assurances. “What Rice has said is a confirmation of what we have been saying —the shadow of Hyde Act is looming large over the 123 Agreement. All assurances the Prime Minister gave Parliament on the act being non-binding cannot be sustained.”

The US secretary of state had said the 123 Agreement would have to “be completely consistent with the obligations of the act”. “We’ll have to be consistent with the Hyde Act or I don’t believe we can count on Congress to make the next step,” she told the chairman of the House foreign affairs panel, Howard Berman.