Karat's battle over nuclear deal not over

FOR AND AGAINST: Karat says the PM did not keep his promise of coming back to Parliament after NSG waiver.

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New Delhi: The Communist Party of India-Marxist has not abandoned its strident opposition to the Indo-US civil nuclear deal with party General Secretary Prakash Karat on Monday saying that it is "surrender to the USA".

"This is an unequal treaty for India. If the Prime Minister and Congress go a head and sign the 123 Agreement then they will be surrendering to the USA and it will be a betrayal to India," Karat said while addressing a press conference in New Delhi.

"This battle will continue till the next Lok Sabha elections. October 4 will be observed as a black day by Left and some other secular parties," Karat thundered.

Karat also claimed US Congress has spelt out that India will have no fuel supply assurance and no assurance regarding building a strategic fuel reserve has been given in the deal.

The CPI-M leader also blamed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of not keeping his promise. "The Prime Minister had promised to come back to Parliament after the NSG clearance but he has given this the go by," he said.

"The device of getting a presidential signing statement to waive the objectionable provisions of the act will not hold water as this law is passed by Congress and Bush will not be president after four months," he said.

He said the Central Government has been claiming that the Hyde Act will be overridden by the last Act passed by the US Congress as per US jurisprudence.

"Now, the last Act contain all the Hyde Act restrictions and they have been made more explicit," he added.

Earlier, the 100-member US Senate approved the nuclear deal after a two-and-a-half-hour debate on Thursday morning, paving the way for the much-touted and widely debated strategic pact to finally be signed by the two countries.

The deal cleared its last legislative hurdle with members from across the political divide supporting the landmark accord. An overwhelming 86 Senators voted for the deal, while 13 opposed it.

The approval legislation was passed by the House at 0619 hrs IST after the upper chamber rejected by voice vote a 'killer amendment' introduced by Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan and Jeff Bingaman.

The killer amendment was proposed to ensure that the US nuclear exports to India do not help boost New Delhi's nuclear weapons programme.

It demanded that US ceases nuclear commerce with India in the event of India detonating a nuclear bomb.