NICOLA Sturgeon has accused her opponents of seeking to block investment in Scotland after they criticised a proposed £10billion deal with China.
The SNP leader defended the initiative after The Herald revealed one of two firms involved in the deal, China Railway Group Limited (CRG) was named in an Amnesty International report on human rights abuses.
Opposition parties urged the SNP leader to reconsider the agreement, which only came to light after it was reported in the Chinese media.
But Ms Sturgeon said: "There is no deal done.
"There is a memorandum of understanding to explore potential options for investment in Scotland.
"If there are any particular and specific deals that come forward then the Scottish Parliament would scrutinise those, the Scottish government would do proper due diligence, and if there were any concerns that said these were deals we should not do then we wouldn't do them.
"With every utterance they make about this, seemingly looking as if they are against exploring investment into Scotland, then I think the opposition parties raise more questions about themselves rather than about the Scottish government."
In March, Ms Sturgeon signed a "memorandum of understanding" between the Scottish government and SinoFortone and China Railway No 3 Engineering Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CRG.
The Herald revealed that CRG has been hit by corruption allegations in its homeland which resulted in Norway's oil fund blacklisting the firm.
On Saturday, the paper also reported claims from a 2013 report by Amnesty International on mining and human rights in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Researchers for the charity were told that 300 households were forcibly evicted in 2011 when the Congo International Mining Corporation (CIMCO), a subsidiary of CRG, was given the rights to a site where they had been living since 2007.
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