Even as the Left position on the 123 Agreement has put a question mark on the future of the UPA government, the ruling Congress is trying to crack its outside allies through continuous back channel maneuvering that started with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s breakfast meeting with CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat on August 14.

The Left, more particularly the CPI-M and the CPI’s leaders are being engaged in informal discussions by a set of senior Congress leaders who are trying to convince them to tone down the attack on the government on the nuclear deal while admitting that they understood the Left’s political compulsions to protest a deal with the United States.

The Prime Minister, who first raised the heckles of the Left by saying in a newspaper interview that it could withdraw its support to his government if they wanted, himself initiated the informal dialogue by inviting Mr Karat for a breakfast meeting on the eve of Independence Day.

His effort clearly did not cut any ice — the CPI-M politburo issued a terse statement just hours after the meeting. Undeterred, he invited West Bengal Chief Minister and senior CPI-M leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharyya for a dinner meeting at his residence.

Pranab’s mission
But External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who has close rapport with the Left’s leadership, might just succeed in doing what the Prime Minister could not.

Mr Mukherjee has held several rounds of telephonic discussions with Jyoti Basu, and indications that his efforts might be paying up came when the veteran Marxist leader said in Kolkata on Friday, even as his party’s politburo meeting was going on in Delhi, that the Left would not withdraw support.

Mr Mukherjee, Congress sources said, was also in regular touch with CPI-M’s Sitaram Yechury, while Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political advisor Ahmed Patel was trying to soften up CPI’s D Raja.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister P R Dasmunsi is also part of the back-channel negotiation team, being in touch with Mr Yechury. Interestingly, the Left’s junior partners RSP and Forward Bloc seem to be nowhere in the picture as far as the Left gameplan is concerned, as CPI-M and CPI are taking all the decisions on the issue.

Mr Dasmunsi also sought to humour the Left publicly on Friday, as he made some light-hearted comments on CPI leader A B Bardhan’s remark that the Left-UPA “honeymoon” was over.

Asked for the Congress response on Mr Bardhan’s views, he said, “Honeymoon should not be carried on for long. We have to continue with our domestic life. The time has come for that.”

“Even I had my honeymoon for three days only,” he added for extra effect.