By IANS
New Delhi : Indian communists Monday warned the government not to proceed with further discussions over the contentious Indo-US nuclear deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with one leader threatening to force a snap poll if this was not heeded.
Speaking after a meeting here of the four Left parties, which provide crucial support to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D. Raja made it clear that the government “should not proceed with the agreement” in view of the overwhelming opposition to the deal in parliament.
“The Left parties wish to state that this would require not taking the next step of negotiations for the safeguards agreement with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency),” he said, reading out a prepared statement.
In the same breath, the four-party bloc also urged members of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) – who Sunday said they would go by whatever Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi decide – to see the merits of the Left criticism of the nuclear pact.
“The Left parties can understand the setting up of a committee or any other mechanism which can go into the objections regarding the agreement and evaluating the implications of the Hyde Act for the nuclear cooperation deal. But this can follow only when the next step at IAEA is not taken,” Raja said.
“The Left parties appeal to all parties in the UPA to see the reasonableness of the stand taken, which is fully in the spirit of our parliamentary democracy and the government’s commitment to the country’s welfare,” Raja said.
“The Left parties await the response of the Congress leadership and the UPA to their proposal.”
Raja’s comments came after a meeting of the top leaders of his CPI, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and Forward Bloc at the CPI-M headquarters where every clause of the nuclear agreement was examined threadbare. The discussions began at 4 p.m. and went on till about 6.30 p.m.
Attending the meeting were CPI-M’s Prakash Karat and his colleague Sitaram Yechury – who had earlier met External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee – CPI leaders A.B. Bardhan and Raja, RSP’s Abani Roy and Forward Bloc’s Debabrata Biswas and G. Devarajan.
Karat and Yechury had also called on Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi Saturday.
Even as the meeting went on, a Left leader who did not want to be identified told IANS that if the government went ahead with the safeguards agreement with IAEA, the multi-party UPA government that survives on Left’s legislative support would surely fall.
This could happen sometime in the second week of September, Left sources pointed out, adding that even while promising to set up a team of experts to examine the Left criticism, the UPA government was going ahead with the agreement which communists insist would make India servile to US strategic interests.
“The Left will not budge,” Yechury reportedly told the meeting.
Another option for the Left is to provide only selective parliamentary support based on issues, leaving the government in an uncertain position and perhaps forcing it to go for early elections.
The Left leaders, informed sources said, also discussed the political fallout of their strident opposition to the deal, which has pitted the communists against a government they helped put in place in 2004.
The media throng at the CPI-M headquarters was so massive that the venue of Raja’s press meeting was shifted from within the building to the lawn outside.
But even then Raja had to literally scream to be heard by everyone, even while cameramen and journalists jostled for vantage positions and engaged in fisticuffs. Once Raja read out the statement, CPI-M MP Nilotpal Basu said grimly: “We shall not take any questions”.
With the Left parties hardening their stand against the civilian nuclear deal, a senior minister in the government tried to allay their concerns by saying the deal will not be operationalised before December 2008.
“A meeting of the IAEA is scheduled on September 27 and on the sidelines of this meeting, India-specific safeguards might be taken up,” said Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal.
“After this, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) will meet in May 2008. That meeting will decide whether and when we will start getting continuous supply of uranium. Only then will the nuclear agreement go to the US Congress. And only after that can the deal can be operationalised,” said Sibal in a bid to assure the belligerent communist parties that the deal was not coming into operation anytime soon.