India shelves US nuke deal for four more weeks

NEW DELHI—India’s government said it would hold off on implementing a controversial nuclear deal with the United States after again failing to win over sceptical coalition partners. After another round of inconclusive talks with its wavering left-wing allies, officials from the dominant Congress party said the atomic energy pact would be shelved for another four weeks.
Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters that the accord would not be “operationalised” before November 16, when more talks are planned. The Congress party of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared to buckle last week under opposition from its leftist allies, who had threatened to withdraw their support and force early elections if the pact went ahead.
“The committee continued its deliberations in a constructive and cordial atmosphere,” Mukherjee said after the meeting between the government and its allies in parliament. In a separate coalition meeting, Singh was also said to have conveyed to the government’s allies his disappointment over opposition to the accord, the NDTV news network said, quoting unnamed sources.
The prime minister has argued the accord, which would bring India into the loop of global atomic energy commerce, would help meet the future energy needs of an economy steaming along with an annual growth rate of nine percent. But the communists say the deal, which would involve India being subjected to more international safeguards including inspections, could harm the country’s nuclear weapons programme. They are also opposed to closer political and strategic ties with Washington.
Ahead of the talks, the deputy head of the Communist Party of India, D. Raja, told AFP that left-wing parties would be pushing for the government “to state its position clearly, to tell us whether the nuclear deal is on hold or not.” A senior official from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which also props up the government in parliament, Sitaram Yechury, told reporters that the left would review its position after Monday’s talks.
He said the government needed to make clear “how it wishes to proceed and on that basis, we will take our future decisions.” The Congress party has been giving conflicting signals over the future of the deal over the past week, and the latest delay means that the future of the accord is still uncertain. Last week Singh told US President George W. Bush that New Delhi was having trouble implementing the deal due to leftist opposition, and went on to admit that “one has to take certain disappointments.”
But once the deal was being described as dead, Singh said he was still hopeful of a compromise. According to political analyst Neerja Chowdhury, there could be three explanations for the prime minister’s seemingly contradictory statements. “One is that he has had enough. He is feeling let down by his alliance partners within the government and the Communists,” she said.
“The second is that the Congress is keeping the talks going with the Communists as a face saver to saying that the deal has been shelved. “The third is that the Congress could keep the talks going” ahead of elections in December in the western state of Gujarat, she said. Various opinion polls have indicated that the Congress would win enough seats in the national parliament to form a government on its own — but Indian opinion polls are also notorious for their unreliability. “If Congress does well in the (Gujarat) polls, the government could call for elections” even if their allies are not prepared for it, she said.
The government and its communist allies agreed on Monday to hold a further meeting next month over a nuclear deal with the United States, the latest sign the ruling coalition was backtracking on finalising the accord. “The next meeting of the committee will be held on November 16, 2007,” Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters.
The statement came after a committee meeting between the government and its communist allies, who oppose the deal. The decision further signals that the government will not force through the nuclear deal, given the depth of leftist opposition. The four main left parties that prop up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition had threatened to end support if the deal was pursued.
The civilian nuclear cooperation deal aims to lift a three-decade ban on sales of U.S. nuclear fuel and reactors to India, imposed after it conducted a nuclear test in 1974, while staying out of non-proliferation agreements. Singh has said he hopes to avoid elections over the deal and told President George W. Bush that there were “certain difficulties” in pursuing it.
While the deal has been hailed as the cornerstone of a new friendship between Washington and New Delhi, the communists say it hurts India’s sovereignty and imposes American hegemony.
The face-off pushed Singh’s government to the brink of collapse, sparked the prospect of snap elections and hurt sentiment on India’s stock markets before the coalition blinked under pressure from other allies opposed to an early vote.—Agencies