By IANS
New Delhi : Senior Congress and Left party leaders met here Monday to work out a via media to end the stalemate over the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal that the communists do not want to be implemented.
The Congress ‘core group’, led by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, that includes Defence Minister A.K. Antony and Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel, met Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary A.B. Bardhan, parliamentary party leader Gurudas Dasgupta and national secretary D. Raja at Mukherjee’s Talkatora Road residence Monday afternoon.
Another meeting on the same subject by the same set of Congress leaders was slated with Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary Prakash Karat and politburo member Sitaram Yechury later at night.
Emerging from the meeting, Bardhan said, “We discussed about the mechanism, we suggested political issues that were required to be addressed by this mechanism. We told them what all should be referred to the experts’ committee. But I will not tell you the details because there are still meetings to be held with the CPI-M, the Revolutionary Sociality Party (RSP) and the Forward Bloc and then we (the Left parties) will meet together and then jointly again with the government and then finalise the whole thing.”
The government had indicated its willingness to set up a committee. But the Left has been insisting that the government should not negotiate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on nuclear safeguards it proposed to set up to secure civilian nuclear assistance from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), till this mechanism had studied the implications of the enabling Hyde Act of the US.
But the government is keen to initiate the process as soon as possible to secure the approval of the US Congress before President George W Bush ends his term by December 2008.
Raja had met Mukherjee on Sunday.
“The meetings are aimed at narrowing down differences between the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and Left Front parties over Left objection to the Indo-US deal nuclear agreement on securing assistance for India’s civilian energy programme,” said a Congress leader who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, who has been defending the deal on television and may also defend the government when parliament debates the issue sometime next week, told IANS, “Any development that narrows down differences between our friends in the Left and us, is always welcome and is a positive development.”
The nuclear deal has been on the boil for two weeks now, since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh challenged the Left to withdraw support if it did not agree with his perception that the deal was in the best interest of the country.
This raised Left’s hackles and their leaders warned that they would seriously reconsider support to the minority government if it went ahead with the “operationalisation” of the deal.
But Sonia Gandhi, who had gone to South Africa and returned Friday, got down to bringing down temperatures within hours of her return. Later, Yechury met Manmohan Singh and briefed him about the decisions of his party’s central committee.