New Delhi, October 17
Even after an explanation by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to US President George Bush about difficulties being faced by him in going ahead with the nuclear agreement the Congress continues to put up a brave face by saying the deal has not been put in cold storage and is very much in the offing.
“It is wrong to say that the N-deal is not on hold......we are holding discussions with the Left parties to narrow down our differences. We are all for the deal,” Congress spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed told mediapersons today. Stating that the Congress is duty-bound to take all its allies into confidence, he said, a final decision will depend on the October 22 meeting of the UPA-Left joint panel on the nuke deal.
Replying to a question on whether the Prime Minister was contemplating resignation, he said, “Dr Singh has full confidence of all the allies and there is no question of either him or the government resigning,”.
The party’s optimism is in sharp contrast to the Prime Minister and Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s recent statements in which they clearly indicated that the government would not be going ahead with the operationalisation of the nuke deal because of the Left’s opposition to the 123 agreement. Ahmed went to the extent of saying that there is no time frame for completing the subsequent steps for clinching the deal, pointing to the recent
statements by the IAEA chief ElBaradei and US assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher.
UPA sources, however, were at pains to say that the nuke deal is very much on hold, adding that the government was well aware from the very beginning that it could not go ahead with the nuke deal unless it got the Left parties on board. It was explained that If the UPA had had ignored the Left and gone to the IAEA, the Marxists would have withdrawn support and the deal would have died a natural death as a caretaker government could not have concluded the agreement. Similarly, the deal would have fallen through if the UPA took heed of the Left’s opposition and opted to save the government.
Irrespective of the Congress party’s public posturing, the focus has now shifted to the October 22 meeting when the Left and UPA leaders are slated to sit down again to resolve their differences over the deal. It is still not clear if the panel’s convener and external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee will inform the Marxists that the government has formally decided not to proceed with the India-specific safeguards negotiations with the IAEA. Alternatively, it may be business as usual with the panel members feigning ignorance about the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi’s statements suggesting that they will accord precedence to the government over the nuke deal.
The panel’s previous four meetings have ended inconclusively with both sides reiterating their stated positions. On the other hand, the Congress has got further isolated with its key allies like the RJD, DMK and the NCP making it very clear that they considered the Left parties valuable allies and did not think it was worth sacrificing the government merely to save the N-deal.
