New Delhi, April 20 (Inditop.com) Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Murli Manohar Joshi Tuesday accused the government of behaving like a stooge of the US and taking critical foreign policy decisions under American pressure.
Joshi, a former minister for human resource development, also accused the government of neglecting cultural diplomacy.
“India can’t become a world power by riding on the shoulders of the US. India has to become an independent power in its own right,” Joshi told the Lok Sabha during a discussion on grants for the ministry of external affairs for 2010-11.
“We have become a lover or a client state of the US.”
According to Joshi, the government had compromised India’s relations with Iran at the behest of the US by voting against Tehran’s nuclear programme. That’s why Iran is not giving India gas, he said.
“There is no direction in our foreign policy. We are not paying sufficient attention to cultural diplomacy,” Joshi said while alerting the government about the potential threat to India’s interests from an assertive China.
