In a strong rebuttal to the Congress on Saturday, which claimed that he had given his consent to the Indo-US nuclear deal in his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in December 2007, BJP leader L K Advani said it was 'baseless'.
"I have seen media reports quoting Kapil Sibal that I had expressed my consent to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the deal. I strongly rebut this report which is baseless. It aims at spreading misinformation and confusion in the run-up to the trust vote, which the UPA government has to face due to a crisis of its own making," Advani told PTI.
Sibal had claimed in an interview to a news channel that Advani had given his consent to the present Indo-US nuclear deal but later backed out when he failed to convince his party leaders.
Advani clarified to PTI that in his meeting with Manmohan Singh in December 2007, he had suggested that the Atomic Energy Act needs to be amended to insulate the deal from the effects of the Hyde Act.
"I had told the PM that the deal in its present form is unacceptable to the country. I had told him that our party's opposition is on account of the fact that the Hyde Act passed by US Congress undermines our strategic autonomy and imposes curbs on our nuclear sovereignty," he said.