New Delhi, July 1: Without spelling anything out, the Samajwadi Party took another calibrated step towards backing the UPA government. Its chief Mulayam Singh Yadav once again said today that his party had “no political enemies” and his general secretary Amar Singh announced, after last night’s meeting with Pranab Mukherjee, the Government’s key interlocutor on the deal, that the UPA’s National Security Adviser would brief the SP leadership on the deal.

The briefing by NSA M K Narayanan — he is on his way back from Iran — at Amar Singh’s residence is ostensibly a response to SP’s longstanding call that so long it has been dependent on the Left for feedback on the deal and was willing to reconsider it if the UPA “shared new facts.”

Parallel to this, the Government, brushing aside the Left’s not-so veiled warnings, announced the PM’s visit to the G8 summit in Japan beginning July 7. Yesterday and even today, CPM leaders said that a visit to the G8 by the PM would tantamount to going ahead with the deal.

But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met President Pratibha Patil at Rashtrapati Bhavan today for 50 minutes after which a statement was issued by Rashtrapati Bhavan: “They discussed recent national and international developments. They also discussed the Prime Minister’s forthcoming visit to Japan to participate in the G-8 Summit.”

Sources in SP and Congress said that the alignment, if and when it comes, is governed more by the realities of politics than those of international strategy.

Given that the SP had openly opposed the nuclear deal and even shared the stage with the CPM at a rally slamming the UPA’s vote against Iran at the IAEA, it’s now clearly looking for a “politically prudent middle path” to package its turnaround.

Also rattled by CPM’s M K Pandhe and now by Mayawati on what they call Muslim opposition to the deal, the SP today kept underlining that its main interest was to keep the NDA out.

That’s why Amar Singh kept downplaying the merits or otherwise of the nuclear deal calling the current engagement as a move to keep “communal forces” out. “The real issue today is how to keep communal forces and opportunist parties at bay, more so in the context of L K Advani’s announcement that it was BJP which led to the BSP’s rise,” he said.

This was echoed by Mulayam who said that “no secular party is untouchable...(we have) no political enemies though there may be ideological differences,” adding that “no decision on supporting the Congress has been taken so far until the UNPA meeting on July 3.”

The SP, which has 39 members in Lok Sabha, is learnt to have put forth certain conditions, the contours of which are likely to be finalized by the Congress core group and the SP leadership. RLD leader Ajit Singh — his party has three MPs — has also indicated his party would back the UPA on the deal.

While SP may have signalled a drifting away from Left parties, Amar Singh today met CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat over the nuclear deal and is learnt to have told him that the Left should not create a situation which strengthens “communal forces” in the country.

Ahead of their meeting on July 3, senior TDP leader Yerran Naidu met Mulayam and Amar Singh in an effort to keep UNPA united. TDP, which is a key constituent of the UNPA, has opposed the nuclear deal and aligned with the Left parties. Naidu’s meeting with SP leaders came after his meeting with Karat.

“There is no threat to UNPA... We are brothers, we are united and will remain united even after July 3,” said Yerran Naidu after meeting SP leaders.

Meanwhile RJD chief Lalu Prasad, who met Congress president Sonia Gandhi today, said the SP was with the UPA and expressed confidence that both the government and the Indo-US nuclear deal would survive.

“Sarkar bi rahega, deal bi chalega (the government will survive and the deal will go through),” Lalu Prasad told reporters. Asked about the possibility of SP supporting the UPA government, he said: “We are together and will always remain together.”