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New Delhi: India's ruling Congress on Tuesday indicated that it was committed to the Indo-US civil nuclear deal while party sources said they were prepared to face an "inevitable" withdrawal of support from Left allies.
Informed sources in the government said that they would go ahead with the deal despite the firm stand that the Left parties have taken against it.
They also said that Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar would attend an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conference in Vienna next month and would continue New Delhi's negotiations with regard to the agreement.
However, sources in the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), which along with its three allies has asked the government not to make the deal operational, reiterated that the Left would pull the plug if the government takes up negotiations in the mid-September IAEA meeting.
Waiting for next move
"We are waiting for the government's next move on this. It has not responded to the Left's unanimous stand against the deal. But if it goes ahead with it, we will be forced to take the extreme step," a politburo member told IANS.
Talking to reporters after a discussion with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, senior CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury said the Left was not against the government's participating in the IAEA meeting, but reiterated that there should not be "any negotiations on the India-specific safeguards with regard to the Indo-US nuclear deal".
He said his party would have no objection to India participating in the IAEA meeting as a member country in the annual general meeting as it does for Unesco and Unicef.
The 51st annual general conference of the UN atomic watchdog will be held from September 17 to 21 and the pre-conference meetings between September 15 and 16.
But Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi told reporters that there was "no change in the government's stance".
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