The Hindu : National : CPI(M) awaiting full text of pact

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Sunday, Jul 29, 2007
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CPI(M) awaiting full text of pact

Special Correspondent

No rejection or acceptance yet: Karat

BANGALORE: Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat on Saturday said the party was awaiting the full text of the civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the U.S. to arrive at a stand.

“We have neither rejected the deal nor accepted it,” Mr. Karat told the media here. “We have been briefed by the Government on the nuclear deal. But we have made it clear that we cannot come to any conclusion till we get the full text of the agreement,” he said. The Government had promised to provide the full text in a week.

He said the party had earlier opposed America’s Hyde Act regarding the nuclear co-operation pact. It had listed nine points which had to be taken care of. The text of the pact needed to be studied to verify if all the issues raised by the party had been addressed. Only after this could it finalise its view on the agreement, he said.

He termed as a “retrograde step” the recent decision taken by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs to permit star PSUs to park 30 per cent of their surplus funds in equity-based mutual funds. Channelising public sector funds into the secondary market to make speculative capital gains was tantamount to wasting public resources on socially unproductive investments, he said.

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