'Left MPs will walk out of voting on N-deal'

KOLKATA: Ruling out the Left parties' joining hands with BJP on the question of Indo-US civil nuclear deal in Parliament, veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu on Friday said their MPs would walk out in the event of vote in Lok Sabha on the deal, which would only benefit the US.

"We will walk out in the event of a voting (on the nuke deal)," Basu told reporters when asked whether they would join hands with the saffron party if voting took place in Lok Sabha on the deal.

Basu's comment came at a time when the opposition BJP is gearing up to put the UPA governemt on the dock seeking a discussion in Lok Sabha under a rule which entails voting.

Expressing his opposition to the deal, the CPI(M) patriarch said it would only benefit the US and not India.

"The left leaders in Delhi have spoken to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing the left parties' reservaion regarding the 123 agreement," Basu said.

"The Prime Minister has reportedly said that the agreement cannot be changed but we have objections to the agreement. The PM has said he would try to convince us regading our concern about the deal. We want that it should be discussed in Parliament," the veteran leader said.

Basu was speaking to newspersons after attending the weekly meeting of the party state secretariat here.

Left parties have already rejected the 123 agreement and asked the UPA government not to operationalise the deal. CPI(M) General Secretry Prakash Karat had earlier said they were "unable to acept the agreement" as it "locked-in India into the US global strategic design."