Karat energy solution: collaborate with China

If few are betting on the successful resolution of the UPA-Left impasse over the nuclear deal — the panel’s meeting began today...

If few are betting on the successful resolution of the UPA-Left impasse over the nuclear deal — the panel’s meeting began today — you can’t blame them.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, in his book to be released next week, couldn’t be more clear: the “first step” in stopping the Government on the “pro-imperialist path,” he says, is the “rejection of the nuclear deal.”

Karat’s remarks are now in his book where the title gives the story away: “Subordinate Ally, the Nuclear Deal and Indo-US Strategic Relations.” (LeftWord, Rs 95). It’s a compilation of many “re-edited” articles of Karat.

On the energy argument of the deal, Karat, in the very first chapter, calls for an “Asian energy security grid” in which India needs to “collaborate” with China and Russia.

“India must get access to diverse sources of energy particularly gas and oil and should promote efforts for an Asian energy security grid. In this it needs to collaborate with China which is the other country with major energy requirements and develop cooperation with

Russia which has emerged as an energy super power,” he writes.

Referring to the visit of USS Nimitz to Chennai in July 2007, in the context of the Logistics Framework Agreement, he says: “If this agreement is put in place, the US Navy can bomb Iraq and Iran and then come to Indian ports for rest, recreation and refueling.”

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After building up this context Karat concludes “A political strategy needs to be drawn up, which can mobilize all the anti-imperialist and patriotic forces to stop the UPA Government from proceeding on this harmful course. As a first step, this requires the rejection of the nuclear cooperation agreement.”

He also recalls UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s comment in Congress magazine Sandesh where she said it was “indeed sad that some parties have tried to communalize the foreign policy,” and says it was “unfortunate” that “communal tag” is attributed to those who protested on India’s vote at IAEA against Iran. Among those doing the attribution, he mentions, is a “section of the pro-American media like The Indian Express.”