N-deal: UPA, Left play for time

Govt not to start talks with the IAEA till the next meeting on October 22.

In a move clearly aimed at buying time, the UPA and the Left parties today decided to meet again on October 22 to discuss their differences on the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement.

The government assured the Left there would be no forward movement on the IAEA safeguards agreement, a key step in operationalisation of the deal, till the next meeting.

The meeting was earlier scheduled for October 16. The change of date is a clear signal that the discussions will be prolonged. Today, both sides were pessimistic on the prospect of an agreement and stuck to their earlier stands.

The direction the meeting would take became clear when Finance Minister P Chidambaram started explaining some legal points of the Hyde Act to the Left leaders.

Before he could complete, the Left leaders told him to stop. "What is the point is discussing these things when we have decided to oppose the deal?" asked a Left leader.

The government said it would not start official negotiations with the IAEA as long as the committee continued its deliberations, but this too came with a rider.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee offered this concession but asked the Left leaders not to spread this news in public. CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat and CPI General Secretary AB Bardhan accepted the offer but said the government should also stop announcing that it was going ahead with the deal.

"Talks are going on, but may become stagnant any moment," Mukherjee later told Business Standard. Both sides find this time-killing strategy suitable.

Karat faces pressure from the party's West Bengal lobby, which does not want immediate elections, while in the UPA, allies like Lalu Prasad's RJD are mounting pressure on the Congress to prevent mid-term polls.

Mukherjee once again requested the Left to allow the government to start negotiations with the IAEA. He assured that the final agreement would not be signed before the UPA-Left nuclear committee completed its negotiations and promised that the draft of the proposal to the IAEA would be shown to the Left parties.

The Left rejected this too. Bardhan even told UPA, "Why do you want to sacrifice your government on the altar of this deal?"

During the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, several issues related to foreign policy were discussed. A long session was devoted to the issue of uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel. The Left asked the government to go slow and insisted the time-table could not be fixed at the wish of the Americans. "We should take our own time," said a Left leader.

Summing up the meeting, Bardhan said, "We haven't found a common ground yet." In the evening, the four Left parties met to discuss their future strategy.