New Delhi, August 24
After holding a round of consultations with her senior party colleagues tonight, Congress president Sonia Gandhi is now expected to open a dialogue with the Left next week in a last-ditch effort to resolve the crisis over the Indo-US nuclear deal.

After CPM general secretary Prakash Karat put the onus on Gandhi yesterday to respond to their decision on the nuke deal, Congress president went into a huddle with the party’s top brass shortly after her return from a three-day trip to South Africa.

Gandhi is likely to convene another meeting of the group before her talks with the Left parties, where she is expected to discuss the contours of the mechanism to sort out their differences. In order to buy more time, the debate in Parliament on the nuclear deal, earlier slated for August 29-30, has now been further postponed.

Before today’s core group meeting, Gandhi was briefed by external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee on his efforts to find a solution to this crisis, triggered by the Left parties’ demanding that the UPA government should not proceed with the nuke deal. The government has been maintaining that it will be difficult to hit the pause button as the country cannot go back on its international commitments.

Having secured the backing of its UPA allies, the Congress is now turning to DMK chief M.Karunanidhi to intercede in this crisis given his rapport with the Left leaders. Mukherjee is going to Chennai tomorrow ostensibly for an official programme but primarily to meet the Tamil Nadu chief minister to brief him on the developments on this crisis and to seek his help in resolving it.

Although the Congress and the Left parties have taken tough positions, they are also trying to hammer out a compromise formula as neither wants to be blamed for pulling down the government. Not only are they ill-prepared for a mid-term election, there are serious apprehensions in both camps that they could facilitate the BJP’s return to power in case of a snap poll.

Clearly, Gandhi has a tough task at hand. After the Congress Working Committee endorsed the Indo-US nuclear deal, Gandhi has to stand by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. At the same time, she cannot allow the government to fall as the Congress will immediately come under attack for its inability to manage a coalition.

Similarly, it is not going to be easy for the Left parties to withdraw its support from the government.

They have in-house problems in their two main bastions -West Bengal and Kerala. Besides, they have to weigh the political fall-out of being seen on the same side as the BJP on this issue.

New Delhi, August 24
Adopting a blow-hot, blow-cold strategy, the CPM today demanded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to give an assurance in Parliament that the UPA government would not proceed with the nuclear deal before allaying apprehensions.

“We want an assurance from the Prime Minister on the floor of the House that they do not proceed with the operationalisation of the 123 agreement before satisfying the apprehensions expressed by us,” said CPM leader Sitaram Yechury.

He said the nuclear debate in Parliament would show that a majority of parliamentarians were opposed to the deal and the government was in a minority on the issue.

The issue is likely to be debated in the Lok Sabha on August 29 or 30. The external affairs minister would reply to the debate and the Prime Minister may intervene.

Yechury met external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee for the third consecutive day. He later said his party was not against India attending the Vienna meet as a member country of the nuclear watchdog, but in no case should it discuss India-specific safeguards agreement.

The CPM’s demand came a day after the party said it did not want the current crisis to affect the government and it wanted to allay apprehensions that it was interested in pulling down the government.

“I don’t see a crisis. Where was it and where has it gone,” Yechury replied to a volley of questions on whether the crisis for the Manmohan Singh government was over.

He made it clear that they were only for pressing the pause button and not the eject or stop button.

Yechury said the Left wanted other important issues like price rise, legislation for workers in unorganised sector and implementation of the recommendations of the Srikrishna Commission and the Sachar Committee to be debated in Parliament along with the nuclear issue.

“We don't want the nuclear issue to hijack other important issues,” he added.