Jaswant Singh, former minister for external affairs, whose controversial book A Call to Honour has created a flutter in political circles, has confirmed that the United States had pressed for more concessions in exchange for signing the nuclear agreement with the National Democratic Alliance government.
He made this comment in an informal chat with rediff.com on Tuesday after his press conference at Parliament House in which he refused to name the 'mole', who he claimed in his book was passing on information to the United States.
"The Americans are always pressing for concessions to suit their needs. Yes, it is true that they had offered a similar kind of agreement to the NDA government, but we decided that it was not in our national interest to open civil nuclear reactors to inspection," Jaswant said.
Jaswant said he was taken aback when the former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told him, "Jaswant you had lied to me about India's nuclear programmes. You had kept us in the dark. It was then that I sent her a copy of the letter written to an official of PMO during Rao's government by one of the American diplomats," he said.
However, Jaswant refused to name the mole. "I have dropped big hints to the media and instead of asking me time and again, you should read between the lines. I will not make public the name because no purpose would be served as the person who was involved is no longer there in a position of power and in fact, not in service," he said.
He said that the moment they got to know the identity of the 'mole', the Vajpayee government took several steps to ensure leakage of the information to foreign countries stopped.
Jaswant will release his book at a function in New Delhi on Thursday.