There were enough indications to suggest that Singh and ElBaradei had informally touched upon the issue of the safeguards agreement India has proposed to sign with the IAEA to operationalise the Indo-US nuclear deal.
With the political tide within the ruling UPA, including the Congress, turning against the nuclear deal in the last four days, the Government maintained a conspicuous silence about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s luncheon meeting on Thursday with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed ElBaradei.
There were enough indications to suggest that Singh and ElBaradei had informally touched upon the issue of the safeguards agreement India has proposed to sign with the IAEA to operationalise the Indo-US nuclear deal. But the Government chose to maintain total silence about the meeting. “We have nothing to say about the meeting,” was all that a spokesman for the Prime Minister said when contacted by Deccan Herald.
Discussions with the IAEA on the safeguards agreement has become an issue of political survival for the Manmohan Singh Government as its Left partners extending outside support have threatened to dissociate themselves from the ruling alliance if it went ahead with formal negotiations with the international watchdog agency.
The silence about the Singh-ElBaradei meeting comes in the backdrop of sudden indications from the Congress that it could consider putting the nuclear deal on the backburner for sometime to avert a snap poll that would be inevitable if the Left pulled out its outside support.
On Wednesday, the Government had put out a brief statement on External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s meeting with ElBaradei.
The statement had virtually acknowledged that the safeguards agreement had come up for discussions of a kind. “They have reviewed other developments of common interest,” the statement issued by the External Affairs Ministry had said, after recalling that the IAEA chief had been speaking supportively of the need for India to “take its rightful place as an equal partner in the global nuclear order.”
The Government has consistently argued that the nuclear deal with the US would, among others, end India’s three-decade-old international nuclear isolation. Sensitive to Manmohan Singh government’s troubles with its Left allies on negotiating the IAEA safeguards agreement, ElBaradei has gone on record saying that his agency would hold negotiations on the issue when New Delhi is ready.
Sources said the Prime Minister continued to be firmly in favour of going ahead with negotiations on the deal. But he seems to be weighed down by sudden coyness in his Congress party in view its UPA allies’ marked preference to avoid snap Lok Sabha polls.
