CPI(M) not to review support over N-deal: Basu

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) at the moment would not review support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government even though the Centre was "completely altering" the independent foreign policy pursued by Jawaharlal Nehru, veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu said on Friday, a day after India-US nuclear deal.

"What can we do? We have no other alternative at the moment," Basu said citing his party's helplessness in view of lack of an alternative. Asked to comment on the nuclear deal, the CPI (M) patriarch said, "The present government, it seems to me, is thinking that without America noting can be done. What Nehru did, they are completely altering it." "It seems to me, that they (the UPA government) are great followers of America. The man (US President Geroge Bush) is a great terrorist.

President Bush in India

Everybody knows what he did in Iraq and what he is trying to do in Iran," Basu said after his party's state committee meeting during the day. He also criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh setting aside protocol to receive Bush at the Delhi airport.

"Our Prime Minister went to receive him (Bush) at the airport. It is shameful for India. It never happenned during the earlier Congress regimes,'' the nonagenarian former West Bengal Chief Minister and CPI (M) politburo member said.