Singh

New Delhi, March 2: Buoyed by a “populist” budget and the successful completion of talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Manmohan Singh government is set to bring the Indo-US nuclear deal out of the freezer.

But the Left isn’t about to microwave the deal to life to meet the US Congress deadline, and CPM sources spoke of the fate of the Finance Bill coming into play if matters reached a flashpoint. The Finance Bill has to be passed for the budget tax proposals to come into effect.

Amid a growing chorus of American voices warning that “time is running out” for the deal, the government is expected to reopen negotiations with the Left parties in the next couple of weeks on the IAEA safeguards agreement.

The UPA-Left committee has not met since November when the Left parties allowed the government to go ahead with talks in Vienna — subject to the caveat that no draft agreement would be finalised without first discussing the “findings” with the Left.

The government, sources said, is now ready to revisit the deal. Although there has been no official word so far, the fifth round of talks between the Indian side and IAEA officials at Vienna is believed to have ended in a “very satisfactory” outcome.

External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, who held an informal round of discussions with CPM politburo member Sitaram Yechury on Friday, is likely to hold another round early next week after the government goes through the draft that has been brought back by the Indian team from Vienna.

The nature of the safeguards agreement, however, is unlikely to have any bearing on the Left’s firm opposition to going ahead with the deal, sources said.

The Left parties had only agreed to allow talks at the IAEA as a “delaying tactic” since neither the Congress nor the communists were keen on elections before the budget.

Both sides, senior Left leaders insist, knew that the “window of hope” offered to the pro-deal lobby would be firmly shut at a later stage. That stage seems to have come.

After the presentation of a “please-all” budget, pro-deal sections of the government have been toying with the idea of risking the withdrawal of support from the Left and face early elections. But that may not be quite so simple. “The government has only presented the budget before Parliament. It has yet to pass the Finance Bill that makes the budget operational,” a senior CPM leader told The Telegraph, hinting that the Left parties would not pass the crucial bill in case of a breakdown in relations over the nuclear deal.

Since the Finance Bill will come up for debate and voting only in May, it could derail the “ideal” time-table for the conclusion of the 123 Agreement. The government has kept a studious silence on the time-line so far but US spokespersons have shown no such squeamishness.

In a series of interviews yesterday on the eve of stepping down from office, the outgoing US undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, said if India were to meet the June deadline for the ratification of the 123 Agreement by the US Congress, it would have to secure the IAEA safeguards clearance by March.

That is the last stage in India’s control after the deal goes into “auto pilot” mode – i.e. a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group and then ratification by the US Congress.

Burns has also made it clear that India cannot complete the next two steps – IAEA safeguards and NSG waiver – without concluding the third step (123 Agreement) as well. The US role is crucial in getting India out of three decades of “nuclear isolation” -- a point stressed by a number of visiting US leaders, including Senator Joseph Biden and defence secretary Robert Gates.

This “blatant” US pressure is another reason that the Congress leadership may not go ahead with the deal despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s repeated assertions that the deal “is good for India and good for the world”, Left leaders feel.

If the government decides to push for the deal – before or after the passage of the Finance Bill – and risks a breach with the Left and early polls, the focus of the election campaign will shift drastically. “In that case, all its aam aadmi projects will be forgotten. The Left, the UNPA and even the BJP will accuse the Congress of surrendering to US imperialism instead of implementing the promises in the CMP and in this year’s budget,” a CPM leader said.