Karat at the conference. (AFP)

New Delhi, Sept. 13: Manmohan Singh had a bad hair day.

First, L.K. Advani demanded an apology for the controversial Ram Setu affidavit. Then, Sonia Gandhi directed him to quickly make amends in court.

But Prakash Karat probably touched a raw nerve when he asked the Prime Minister to be “choosy about his friends”, lest he met the fate of Tony Blair of the UK, Shinzo Abe of Japan and John Howard of Australia.

“Blair has resigned. Abe’s gone and Howard’s going. And let’s not forget the US’s favourite ally, Musharraf,” the CPM general secretary said at a conference on the nuclear deal.

Through his message, he appeared to suggest that the three world leaders had paid the price of being too close to President George W. Bush.

This was one of the rare occasions that Karat, who said he did not want Singh to be in the category of the three leaders, made a personal reference to the Prime Minister publicly after ties between the Left and the UPA frayed over the deal.

If the Centre still insists on pursuing the agreement, the CPM leader said, the writing on the wall was loud and clear: “We will not be there to help this government conclude this agreement.”

Alluding to a reported statement made by Singh in a interview in which he hailed Bush as the “friendliest” US President India has ever had, Karat said: “The PM sincerely believes Bush is the greatest friend India has had among all US Presidents. He said so. The supreme irony is that Bush is the most hated President within the United States. A leader whose ratings have fallen below 30 per cent is our greatest benefactor.”

At the conference, organised by former Prime Minister V. P. Singh, Karat iterated the CPM’s familiar arguments against the nuclear deal. He accused the government of reneging on its commitments in the national common minimum programme. He stressed the point that it was the UPA (principally the Congress) that had drawn up the charter of governance, not the Left.

“They (the UPA) worked on the policy document, not us. Five or six drafts were given and the foreign policy formulation, which initially spoke of a strategic partnership with the US, was deleted later. The final one spoke of pursuing an independent foreign policy,” Karat said.

The majority of members in Parliament were against the treaty, he said, listing the Left — “the parties on which you depend” — the NDA and the UNPA.