NEW DELHI, APRIL 29: As the UPA government looks to the May 6 meeting to push the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Left today indicated that it can stall any further development on this front, at least until July. This, incidentally, was the timeframe indicated by top US Senators like Joseph Biden and John Kerry when they visited India.

“It would be just another meeting (on May 6). There won’t be any outcome,” a top CPM leader told The Indian Express. He also said the Left would see to it that “nothing will happen till July.”

This assertion runs against the timeframe that Washington has in mind. While India has been officially maintaining that there are no deadlines, Biden, during a visit to India in February along with senators Kerry and Chuck Hagel, had said: “Time is of the essence... If we don’t have the deal back with us clearly prior to the month of July, it will be very difficult to ratify.”

Reiterating the party position, the CPM leader also said that his party would not agree to have any time frame set for further discussion. “There won’t be any time frame set for winding up the discussion. It can continue for any length,” he said.

The CPM’s strategy is clearly that of prolonging these inter-party deliberations, knowing well that stretching the timeline is as good as killing the deal. CPM sources said the government, at the May 6 meeting, would provide explanations to queries raised by the Left. “Then we will ask for more time to ascertain the explanations,” said a senior leader.

The CPM’s political report presented to the party congress in Coimbatore last month had also said that the Left would ask the government not to finalise the safeguards agreement with the IAEA and prevent it from approaching the NSG for an exemption. Signals from the CPI are similar. Party leaders say that the UPA is reconciled to the fate of the deal. “The government and the Left know it too well that there won’t be any progress until July.”

Will never declare deal dead: US

WASHINGTON: The White House on Tuesday said it is “never” going to declare the stalled nuclear deal “dead” since the pact is considered “critically important”. Voicing optimism that the deal would clear the hurdles at IAEA and NSG, it said the “main stumbling block” was the internal political process in India,