Sonia, Karat

New Delhi, June 18: The Congress has dug in its heels on the nuclear deal and said the government would go to the IAEA board to seek its approval for the India-specific safeguards agreement regardless of the Left’s objections.

“Going to the International Atomic Energy Agency is non-negotiable, it is above politics,” a source said.

As both sides became intransigent, a meeting of the UPA-Left panel scheduled for this evening was put off until June 25.

As back-to-back talks between Pranab Mukherjee and Prakash Karat over the past two nights yielded little, neither the Left nor the Congress saw sense in holding the meeting. CPM leader Sitaram Yechury had also met Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday night.

However, for the record, they adduced other reasons for postponing the meeting. The Left said Mukherjee, the foreign minister and the panel convener, was busy with a Syrian delegation, while Congress sources claimed the CPM sought time to speak to its allies.

Neither expected a breakthrough at the next meeting, either.

Sources said a resolution or otherwise depended on who would “blink first”. The Congress is expected to take a political call on “deal or power” shortly after factoring in various circumstances.

Another senior source said Mukherjee, who briefed both the Prime Minister and Sonia today, was unlikely to meet Karat again before June 25.

Mukherjee is also expected to sound out allies from tomorrow on what course of action to take if the deadlock drags on beyond the June 25 meeting, the source added.

Mukherjee has been told that he should proceed on the presumption that Sonia and Manmohan Singh wanted the deal to be done, according to the source.

The Congress made it clear that there was “no way” the government would accede to the Left’s demand to see a copy of the safeguards agreement negotiated with the IAEA.

“It was done by a sovereign government and is sealed and secret. We cannot show it to a constituent which is not part of the government,” one of the sources said.

The Left’s concerns, he said, were addressed “diligently” at the last meeting of the panel and “no information was withheld”.

Last year, when it looked as though the Left would pull out after the Prime Minister dared it to withdraw support, Sonia had not been keen to forfeit the government for the deal and “risk” an early election.

The sources claimed her position had “changed somewhat” now. Like many others in the Congress, she, too, had been wondering if it was worth allowing the Left to ride roughshod over the government and the Prime Minister on policies and issues.

However, the sources were still unsure if Sonia would go to the extent of jeopardising the Congress’s relations with the CPM and wade into an election.

Asked if it was the “endgame”, a government source said: “We are not yet saying this will be done at any cost.”

Sonia and her aides are likely to take a decision after the June 25 meeting. But a CPM statement not to “allow” the government to engage with the IAEA virtually forecast the outcome of the proposed meeting. “The Left wants to sabotage the deal,” a Congress leader said.

“We have to start looking at other issues. The main ones for which we want an answer are ‘should the Prime Minister and his government allow themselves to be bullied forever by the Left and lose whatever prestige that remains’? Everybody is already in election mode. How does it matter if elections are held later this year or in early 2008?” one of the sources asked.

The possibilities the Congress is keeping in mind are:

The UPA allies, principally the RJD and the DMK, can be worked on. These parties were against an election in 2007 but the Congress feels that this time round, they might not be rigid

The “politically powerful” middle class constituency is pro-deal. The delimitation has increased the number of seats dominated by the urban middle-class. The Congress cannot ignore this factor

It is important to secure the approval of the IAEA’s board before the current director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, demits office in July-end. The government is unsure if his successor will be as supportive as he is.