Time running out for India nuclear deal: US
Foreign Desk Report

NEW YORK—Time is running out for a landmark nuclear deal between India and the United States that has been stalled by opposition from four leftist parties in India, a top U.S. State Department official said on Tuesday.
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said it was an internal matter for the Indian government to decide on whether to go ahead with the deal, which would let the country import U.S. nuclear fuel despite having tested nuclear weapons in the past. “We don’t want to interfere in those decisions but we’re certainly saying this is a time for reflection,” Burns told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “We don’t have an unlimited amount of time,” Burns said, noting that the United States was approaching an election year and it was hard to pass legislation at such times.
“We’d like to get this agreement to the U.S. Congress by the end of the year,” he said. The Indian government is in talks with the four leftist parties who oppose the deal because they do not want to come under U.S. influence. Asked what would happen if, as seems likely, the Indian government could not deliver, Burns said: “I’m not as pessimistic.”
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.