Russia backs PM: foreigners fuelling TN nuclear protests

Russia has strongly backed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent assertion that non-government organisations, mainly based in the US but also in Scandinavia, are funding and fomenting the protests against the Kudankulam nuclear project.

Russian Ambassador to India Alexander M Kadakin said late on Friday, "I have read PM Singh's statement. We have been suspecting it all along, and I was openly saying this.

''It was very strange that six months after Fukushima tragedy (in May), all those protesters raise their voice. They were sleeping for six months and then all of sudden they raise their voice against the most secure and the best and safest station in the world. Of course we were perplexed but now we stand vindicated," he said.

In an interview to US-based magazine Science published on Friday, Prime Minister Singh had said, "The atomic energy programme has got into difficulties because these NGOs mostly, I think, based in the US, don't appreciate the need for our country to increase energy. The local NGO-led protests have stalled the commissioning of two 1,000 MW nuclear reactors."

The prime minister's views echoed those of other officials connected with the project, who have long been blaming foreign-funded NGOs for the protests that escalated last year in the wake of the earthquake-tsunami disaster in Japan.(See: PM sees foreign hand in TN nuclear plant protests).

Nuclear Power Corp (NPC) chairman and managing director S K Jain made similar allegations in October last year. "Foreign nationals who are greens from the US, Finland, France, Australia and Germany are now at Kudankulam opposing the project. They are backing the local population in their agitation," Jain had said (See: PCIL chief sees 'foreign hand' in TN anti-nuke protests).