N-deal talks to continue, says govt

Left parties see red.

Upbeat after a "people-friendly" Budget, the government today used its prerogative to make a suo motu statement in Parliament on "foreign policy-related developments".

The move raised eyebrows as the government has already made a fairly detailed statement in the President's address to the joint sitting of Parliament where it has spelt out its foreign policy positions and priorities.

In today's statement, the emphasis was on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, couched in terms calculated to make the Left parties see red.

While committing India to continuing negotiations on the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement and an India-specific nuclear safeguards agreement, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee gave no indication of when the negotiations might be wrapped up.

But he emphasised that India would be unable to conduct any such agreements with any country unless it got the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) to amend its guidelines for civil nuclear commerce in favour of India.

"This will open the door to civil nuclear cooperation with various countries, including Russia, USA, France and UK, with many of whom the necessary enabling bilateral agreements for such trade have been discussed and are in various stages of finalisation," the statement said.

He made light of the reservations of both the BJP and the Left parties about the Hyde Act, something that hasn't been put so squarely on the table in the recent past, and added that all the Hyde Act represented was an enabling provision between the executive and the legislature in the US.

By no means did the statement remotely suggest that India had abandoned negotiations on an agreement that the majority in Parliament is opposing.

As it is the Hyde Act that is exercising the Left the most, Mukherjee's intention could only have been to ruffle feathers "" which his statement did.

The CPI(M) said "the government should acknowledge that its stand on the nuclear deal does not have the support of Parliament" and warned that as there was no political consensus it should not proceed further with the agreement.

Mukherjee's statement comes days after Congress President Sonia Gandhi said during campaigning in Tripura that the Congress was not in power because it was at the mercy of one or other political party.

As Mukherjee's statement attempts to isolate the Left parties, it was being read in Parliament lobbies as a way of further distancing the Congress from the Left and the imminence of elections being advanced.

A top Congress leader said: "The two main issues that the Congress expects will be discussed in elections are price rise and security. We don't expect the euphoria generated by the loan waiver or income tax breaks to last too long. But we are trying to see the end of the stand-off on the nuclear deal. The statement was given to achieve this".