The Hindu Business Line : N-deal: Govt setting up panel to study Left objections

New Delhi, Aug. 30 Ending the confrontation between the Congress and the Left parties, the Government on Thursday announced that it would operationalise the Indo-US civil nuclear deal only after a committee has looked into the objections raised by the Left parties.

“The operationalisation of the deal will take into account the committee’s findings,” said the External Affairs Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, in a statement after a meeting of the Congress and Left parties.

The meeting decided to set up a committee, the composition of which would be announced shortly.

Though Mr Mukherjee did not take any questions after the 30-minute meeting at the residence of the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, the Left leaders said that the statement makes it very clear that the Government will not operationalise the deal till the committee’s findings are known.

Ever since the details of the 123 agreement were made public, the Left parties had demanded that the deal should not be operationalised, while the Government maintained that there was no going back on the issue.

The situation took a serious turn when Dr Singh dared the Left parties to withdraw support on the issue.

They retaliated by warning of serious consequences if the Government went ahead with the deal.

According to the statement by Mr Mukherjee, in view of the objections raised by the Left parties to the Indo-US bilateral agreement on nuclear co-operation, it had been decided to constitute a committee to go into these issues.

The committee would look into “certain aspects of the agreement, the implications of the Hyde Act on the 123 agreement and self-reliance in the nuclear sector, the implications of the nuclear agreement on the foreign policy and security co-operation.”

On whether there will be a timeframe for the committee to complete its task, Mr Debabrata Biswas, General Secretary of the Forward Bloc, said: “The committee will first have to be set up and then we can finalise the timeframe.”

Prior to the meeting, the Left leaders met among themselves to chalk out their strategy while the core group of the Congress also met to thrash out the issue.

Today’s decision to set up a committee comes ahead of the debate on the nuclear issue in Parliament, tentatively scheduled for September 10-11.

On whether the crisis for the Government was now over, Mr Biswas said: “We never said the crisis was for the Government. But the country is in crisis.”

Operationalising the nuclear deal would imply that India begins negotiations with the IAEA for India-specific safeguards, to be followed with negotiations with the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group. After that, the deal would go to the US Congress for ratification.