External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee clarified today that there was no time frame for the UPA-Left committee set up to look into the Left’s concerns about the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal.

“We have to work as expeditiously as we can,” he told reporters. Asked about the first meeting of the committee, he said, “let them (the Left) come back from their agitation”. The Left is engaged in countrywide protests against the multi-nation naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal.

Congress sources said the committee was likely to hold its first meeting after September 9.

“Let us meet and then we will understand each other’s understanding. The mechanism is to understand and assess the situation,” said the minister. Rejecting the Opposition parties’ demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to go into the US nuclear deal, “We are ready to discuss with them (the NDA) also. The Prime Minister had called them. If they want to seek clarifications, we are ready to give them,” he said.

In a related development, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi also rejected the Opposition’s demand for a JPC to look into the nuclear deal arguing that there were no laws, practices, conventions or established procedures to this effect.