NEW DELHI, 28 August 2007 — Leaders of the Congress party and its left allies met again yesterday to sort out differences over a civilian nuclear energy deal with the United States.
On the agenda were modalities of setting up a panel to evaluate the implication of the US Hyde Act on India’s foreign policy. Ahead of the meeting, a Congress leader said: “The meeting will discuss the modalities of the proposed mechanism and other related issues.”
Senior Congress leaders, including External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Defense Minister A.K. Antony and Political Secretary to Congress President Ahmed Patel held a meeting yesterday with A.B. Bardhan, D. Raja and Gurudas Dasgupta of Communist Party of India (CPI). Following the 90-minute meeting, Bardhan said that the government had expressed willingness to set up a mechanism to resolve the issue.
“We had a discussion on the issue of the opposition to the Indo-US nuclear cooperation deal. We discussed all the questions. It was decided that a mechanism should be worked out,” Bardhan said.
The Congress leadership would hold separate discussions with other left parties — Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Bardhan said. “After they have come to a conclusion, a formal meeting will be held,” Bardhan said.
Senior Congress leaders decided to consider setting up a mechanism, as suggested by the left, to study the deal, during their meeting last week following Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s return from South Africa.
In several informal meetings held between Congress and the CPI-M in recent days, the two sides agreed to have representatives from both sides on the proposed mechanism.
Left leaders have made it clear that they will not remain mute spectators if the government tries to pacify them by setting up the mechanism and also continues moving ahead with the deal. On this, CPI-M leader Brinda Karat told a news channel: “We (left parties) urge the prime minister to value the vote of the Indian members of Parliament above the vote of a member of the US Congress. What we are saying is not to put the deal into effect as the issue deeply concerns our future. The government is at pain to explain that the Hyde Act is not applicable to India. But this is an India-centric act specifically cleared by the US Senate.”
Brinda also said that serious differences need to be resolved within the framework of the common minimum program “where there is no room for an agreement which will lock us militarily, economically and politically to the US.” Dismissing chances of the left softening its stand in a bid to resolve the crisis, she asserted: “There is no question of softening our standpoint. There was nothing ever soft or hard line. There is a straight line. The US Congress can’t decide what Indians should have or would have. The Indian Parliament will decide and that is what is happening now.”
