New Delhi, September 17
The four Communist parties are holding a crucial meeting tomorrow to study the government’s response to their concerns on the Indo-US nuclear deal, a day ahead of the UPA-Left committee meeting to discuss the implications of the Hyde Act on Wednesday.

“We have received the government’s response to the note submitted by us. We will meet tomorrow to discuss it,” said a senior Communist leader.

The meeting also assumes significance as the Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar, now in Vienna for the International Atomic Energy agency meet, and reports indicate that negotiations for India-specific agreement with the atomic agency could begin in October.

Left party sources said there would be serious problems if the government starts negotiations with the IAEA. Our understanding with the government is that it will not take the next step in operationalising the nuclear deal, which is negotiating with the IAEA.

Although the government and the Left parties differ in their interpretations of the term “operationalisation,” the Manmohan Singh government has stated that it has to undertake IAEA negotiations and clearance from the nuclear suppliers group and the US Congress has to approve the deal before the operationalisation of the deal.

The Tuesday meeting of the Left parties and the UPA-Left Committee meeting is unlikely to result in major shift in the stand of the two sides and could result in further hardening of their stance.

The CPM Politburo and the party’s central committee are meeting Kolkata later this month where the issue of propping up the Congress led coalition at the Centre could be settled.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that UPA has sent 12-page reply countering the stance of the Communist point-by-point and defending that it was the “best possible” deal under the circumstances.

Sources said major part of the reply deals with the implications of the Hyde Act. The government has refuted charges of the Left leaders that the Act is binding on India. It argues that once the agreement is approved by the US Congress in an up-and-down vote, the Hyde Act has no relevance to the nuclear deal and the ‘controversial’ clauses of the Act, which is essentially a domestic law of the US, will not have an impact on the deal.

The UPA has compared China’s 123 agreement with the US and the Indo-US nuclear deal. The UPA has underlined that India’s 123 agreement is better than China as it provides a one-year notice period in case of termination of the deal. China also doesn’t have the rights to reprocess that India has acquired after tough negotiations, the note mentioned.

The note covers various aspects of the issue, including the fears that the deal would not cover the entire nuclear fuel cycle and deny access to technologies relating to enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water production.

The document is also understood to have highlighted the Left concerns relating to the pursuance of an independent foreign policy by the government and the US “designs” to bring India into a wide-ranging strategic alliance, they said.