The Hindu : 'Take a firm stand on Iraq'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 12, 2003

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'Take a firm stand on Iraq'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 11. The Opposition parties today kept up the pressure on the Vajpayee Government, demanding that it come out with a categorical stand on the Iraq situation.

The Congress and the CPI (M) criticised the Government for advocating a `middle path' and sought to know what prevented it from taking a firm view when countries such as Germany, France and Russia had done so.

The Congress charged that the Government's stand did not exclude support to war even without the United Nations and had not precluded support to the war effort. The party spokesman, S. Jaipal Reddy, said the stance should reflect the broad sentiments prevailing in the country against the war.

The party was also against any support, whether `moral or material', so long as it was without U.N. mandate.

A day after the all-party meeting, the CPI (M) politburo demanded that the BJP-led Government heed public opinion and views of all the political parties and declare that the U.S. should not take recourse to war. It urged that Iraq's national sovereignty be protected.

It was both "unfortunate and deplorable that the Prime Minister still talks of pursing a `middle path' which is just a euphemism for tacit connivance with the totally illegal U.S. plan for aggression".

Meanwhile, the CPI (M) parliamentary party leader, Somnath Chatterjee, told presspersons that the leaders of various Opposition parties, including the Congress, met here and decided to raise the Iraq issue in Parliament.

He was intrigued by the Vajpayee Government's `golden silence' and its not taking a categorical stand against war. He asked what the middle path was that the Prime Minister was speaking about. "Where is the middle path between war and peace?'' the CPI-M leader said.

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