"Blair has resigned. Abe has gone. Howard is going," Prakash Karat has  reminded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [Images], warning him to be "very careful about choosing his friends."

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) strongman hinted that Prime Ministers of Britain and Japan--Tony Blair and Shinzo Abe--paid the price of being too close to United States President George W Bush [Images] to drive home the point that Singh may face the same fate in the context of the Indo-US nuke deal. Aussie premier John Howard on Thursday indicated that he is willing to stand down.

Trying to queer the pitch to take the contentious deal off the table, Karat, albeit in a lighter vein, said, "I would like the Prime Minister (Singh) to be very careful about choosing his friends." Abe, Blair and Howard were described by Karat as Bush's "other friends".

Karat also said everybody knows about Pakistan and the condition of Bush's favourite ally Pervez Musharraf [Images] and added that "we don't want our prime minister in that category".

The CPM leader also came down heavily on the prime minister for describing Bush as the "greatest friend of India", saying it was a "supreme irony" that the "most-hated president" in the US is the "greatest benefactor" of this government.

Karat's comments at a conference on implications of the Indo-US nuke deal.