With claims and counter-claims by the US and India on the David Headley case, the CPI(M) has asked the government to seek a "categorical assurance" from Washington that it would not tolerate terrorism against India emanating from its soil when US President Barack Obama is here.
"The Obama administration must be made to come clean on this issue and give India a categorical assurance that it will demonstrate zero tolerance to terrorism in India and take action against those who plot against India from its soil," Politburo member Sitaram Yechury has said.
According to him, India "must raise with the US President the issue of David Headley who confessed his involvement in the Mumbai terror attack of 26/11".
In an editorial in the forthcoming issue of party organ “People's Democracy”, Yechury said it has now been shown that Headley was working as a double agent for both al Qaeda through the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and US intelligence agencies while he received training at terrorist camps in Pakistan.
"It must be noted that the decision to arrest Headley (by the US) was taken only after he shifted his attention from India to Europe and not on the grounds of his involvement in 26/11," he said, adding that Headley has pleaded guilty to all 12 terror charges under a plea bargain.
Quoting reports, Yechury said the US did not follow up on several warnings, including those by two of the three wives of Headley, "to avoid a line of investigation that could lead to evidence of its key ally Pakistan's involvement in these attacks which Pakistan's ISI vociferously denies".
Referring to the recent Wikileaks documents on the Iraq war, the senior CPI(M) leader said history has once again demonstrated that US imperialism acts only in accordance with its interests. "A leopard never changes its spots.
"US imperialism must be made to answer for such gross abuses of human rights and worst incidents of war crimes in modern times," he said.
He pointed out that the four lakh leaked official documents had detailed the deaths of over "1.10 lakh innocent civilians in Iraq, pushing the number of such murders up exponentially".
"When President Obama comes visiting us shortly, India must also raise these issues and remind him of the unanimous resolution of the Parliament which had disapproved (not condemned, as the Left had demanded) US military invasion in Iraq," Yechury said.
He said all "excuses" justifying US war against Iraq have been "proved to be false and untenable" by the documents."Yet, on this basis, US imperialism has revealed, once again, to the world its inhuman face", Yechury said, adding that the UN has the US government to order full investigation of the US armed forces' involvement in human rights abuses in Iraq.