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New Delhi, June 23: Delhi today braced for further reminders from the US to speed up the nuclear deal while the CPM pulled out a new argument against it: an unfavourable Muslim reaction.
Influential Congressman Gary Ackerman is scheduled to arrive in India on Friday and is expected to meet the Prime Minister, though his final itinerary has not been worked out. Sources said he is expected to nudge the Centre on the nuclear deal.
Ackerman, a Democrat, is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, as well as of the Congressional Caucus on India. His visit comes ahead of Manmohan Singh’s meeting with US President George W. Bush on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Japan on July 7-9.
The Left piled pressure from the opposite direction. The CPM-backed Kairali TV in Kerala interviewed the Indian Union Muslim League patriarch, Panakkad Muhammedali Shihab Thangal, and reported he had threatened to pull out the League’s nominee, junior foreign minister E. Ahamed, from the government if the Centre went ahead with the deal. Thangal later said he was misinterpreted but by then the CPM had seized its chance.
“The minority population does have reservations about the kind of strategic tie-up India is pursuing with the US. This message should not be lost,” CPM politburo member S. Ramachandran Pillai told The Telegraph.
CPM sources said “the minority factor” would weigh heavily on the minds of Samajwadi Party leaders if they considered bailing the Centre out on the deal and winning the Congress’s friendship.
“Mulayam (Singh Yadav) will have to think twice before supporting the deal since an overwhelming majority of Muslims are not in its favour,” another CPM politburo member, M.K. Pandhe, said.
CPM general secretary Prakash Karat today met Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar to discuss the crisis over the nuclear deal.
Sources said the Left was expecting to hear the Congress’s final decision when foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee returned from his Australia trip tomorrow.
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