JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, August , 2007
Three weeks after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh challenged the Left parties, in an interview with `The Telegraph’, to withdraw support over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the government somewhat noisily climbed down today and put the deal into cold storage – at least for the time being.
Acutely aware that it was being forced by the Left parties to choose between keeping the government alive and going ahead with the deal, the government’s ace-trouble-shooter External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee chose to go with the former option.
But Mukherjee, sources said, still hoped that even if the UPA had lost the battle with the Left, it would go on to win the war.
The sources, somewhat crestfallen, nevertheless maintained that ``there was no way’’ the government would not go ahead with the 123 agreement, that abandoning the deal altogether would mean ``not only a terrible defeat for the UPA alliance, but a huge blow for India’s credibility abroad.’’
Clearly, though, today’s announcement of a political committee that will seek to allay the fears and concerns of the Left parties, doesn’t eliminate the danger to the life of the government, only defers it.
However, the creation of such a committee -- significantly, one with no deadline – also indicates that both the government and the Left have, albeit reluctantly, agreed to buy some more time so that third parties do not benefit from their squabble.
The BJP, for example, continued to demand for a joint parliamentary committee to go into the nuclear deal, pointing out that the setting up of a mechanism between the Congress and the Left on the nuclear deal was not a personal matter, but one that impacted the entire nation.
According to Left sources, Mukherjee had assured them that the government would not go ahead with operationalising the deal as long as the committee was alive.
However, government sources pointed out that the committee could not be permanently open-ended.
Aware that an IAEA Board of governors meeting is being held on November 22, the government may well use that date as an internal deadline to take a political call on the Left support to the UPA alliance.
With Gujarat elections out of the way by then, the Congress party could find it easier to weigh the nuclear deal in balance.
The Foreign minister today sought to assuage the Left parties by stating that ``operationalisation of the deal will take into account the committee’s findings.’’
The Foreign minister’s skilful choice of words may be worth bearing in mind. Nowhere in the statement is it said that the government is bound to accept the committee’s outcomes.
Meaning, Delhi will not ask for a meeting with the IAEA to discuss an India-specific safeguards agreement, something that constitutes the immediate next step in operationalising the 123 agreement.
But MEA sources insisted that even as the committee, mostly political in nature, looked into ``certain aspects’’ of the bilateral agreement, ``the implications of the Hyde Act’’ on the 123 agreement, as well as ``implications of the nuclear agreement on foreign policy and security cooperation,’’ key interlocutors of the government would continue to talk to key members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group for support for the 123 agreement.
For example, when Mukherjee speaks for India at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 28, he will undoubtedly also talk about the nuclear deal in his conversations with key NSG member states.
The sources pointed out that if the political committee did not succeed in assuaging the Left, the government would have no option but to go ahead with the deal. They accepted that elections were inevitable in such a scenario.
Under the circumstances, it now seems that the government’s internal deadline, for the committee as well as for taking the first of the three-step operationalisation, is around December 2007-January 2008.
The sources pointed out that India would be in grave danger of losing the momentum for support it had generated for the deal, and that further delay could mean that naysayers like China, Nordic countries like Sweden and Norway and even Ireland, would be strengthened by the internal opposition.
Although, in principle, the US Congress would remain very much alive, at least till elections will be held in November 2008, in practice, the US election machinery would get underway by January 2008.
The sources pointed out that after that it would be increasingly difficult to get distracted US Congressmen to focus on the Indo-US deal.
Moreover, the 123 agreement, according to the requirements of the Hyde Act, needs to be considered by the US Congress for at least 75 ``working days,’’ (or two-and-a-half months).
That would mean that the 123 agreement, having already cleared the IAEA hurdle as well as in possession of a waiver by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, would have to be submitted to the US Congress by the Bush administration in December-January.
ENDS
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